


The Demon’s Almanac

by Hermit9



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 10, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Sexual Assault, Casual Racism, Dean is a few shades short of a good guy, Demon!Dean, Farm Work, Gen, Lots of OCs - Freeform, Migration, POV Dean Winchester, So many OCs, Somewhat Unreliable Narrator, fake identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermit9/pseuds/Hermit9
Summary: Dean slips the bounds of the Bunker and leaves. He wasn’t lying when he told Sam he liked the disease. Betrayed by Crowley — hunted by his Brother — Dean hits the road. He doesn’t intend on getting caught again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lovely art by the amazing [Pimento](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pimento).
> 
> Beta by the incredibly skilled [Deejaymil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/) (seriously, go read her stuff)
> 
> With thanks to [ThayerKerbasy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThayerKerbasy), [Tellthenight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tellthenight/), as well as the WWM discord and r/fanfiction discord for listening to me whine about this for so long.


	2. Soul Survivor

The dungeon was the same temperature as the rest of the bunker, slightly humid but not cold. Sam hadn’t turned off the lights as he’d stormed off. He probably thought it was kindness. 

Dean pulled at the ropes tying him to the chair, rubbing them back and forth against the frame. It gave him something to focus on other than the noises of the bunker at large that he’d never noticed as a mortal. Creaks and groans as it built subtle sounds in layers: wards fighting off detection spells, invocations of incuriosity on the few people that drove by. The strain of keeping him in. 

The blood coursed through him, ice cold under his skin, until the Mark would flare and fight it off. It was a bit like being a chew toy contested over by two massive beasts: wet and unpleasant. He could see the shimmering quality of the devil’s trap’s boundaries. They became more translucent with each dose of the cure. 

Sam’s footsteps retreated away from the dungeon, up and probably towards the war room. Dean wasn’t able to track him, hobbled by the wards, which was annoying. He was also keenly aware that his clothes still carried the acrid stench of the tear gas, combined with cheap whiskey and the cheaper perfumes of the strippers. Not that he couldn't smell it before, but it hadn't bothered him. He could feel the roiling mess of emotions inching back, the ever-present guilt, the weight of his failures. He pulled at the ropes faster.

They fell off his wrists with a satisfying tearing sound, now frayed and broken. The ones binding his legs were easy to deal with. Sam was good with knots, but Dean had taught him everything he knew and he’d always been the better escape artist. It was time to blow this joint. Dean walked the circle of the devil’s trap as he stretched, feeling his spine pop back into place. He ran his hand along the heat mirage shimmer of the boundaries, casing it like he would any heist. Sam would be back for for his next dose of condensed humanity in roughly twenty minutes. The inlaid runes and iron would take too long to break and dig out so he’d have to find another weakness to exploit. 

He leaned against the boundary, feeling it fight against him like thousands of blunt needles. It moved around his shoulder, dipping outward. Dean stumbled to his feet. This was interesting. He pushed again, with his hands this time, feeling the strange stretchy quality. It felt like plastic wrap stretched taut across a doorway. He’d pranked Sam once that way, before the kid had lost his sense of humor. Dean smiled and, leading with the freshest injection site, he shoved himself at the edge.

The trap screeched around his nerves. The blunt needles turned sharp, then burning, like being flayed from the inside. Dean fell on his knees, outside the circle and without a mark on his skin to betray the agony of it. He’d have to remember that, it was a neat trick that no one was likely to have in their toolbox. Maybe on a almost-but-not quite formed demon it would work. Dean pried the doors open, thankful his little brother was soft and trusting. He hadn’t fastened the latch, secure in his faith that Dean wouldn’t hurt him should the Bunker’s wards fail. Poor, naive, overgrown kid. 

He’d show him, show them all the price of locking him away. 

Dean paused at the door, the Mark’s bloody battle cry ebbing as he crossed over the built-in salt line. Killing Sam would only make Castiel angry. The angel might be a fading echo of what he had once been, but he was still someone Dean didn’t want to face in battle. Not blood soft and very nearly human. Killing Cas wouldn’t be impossible, but some of his followers were bound to feel obligated to avenge him. As if heaven had any hands bereft of blood. Not to mention the hunters. The current situation at least had them running to Sam instead of mounting stupid attacks.

He crouched in the mud outside the bunker, watching as Castiel parked his monster of a car in front of the door. The other angel riding with him looked incredibly uncomfortable. She stayed in the car, sitting too straight and too stiff. Too bad the feather squad were all so puritanical. She looked pretty. 

Dean carefully edged away, cutting across the fallow fields. It was a warm, bright August night. He could find a car, there was no rush, no point in worrying. He smiled, as he blended into the night. 


	3. A new name

The badly pieced together Mazda died two days later. The narrow downhill back lane was a mess of curves and tangles like a string draped over the mountains by a petulant child. Everything past the car was covered in fog: thick and pearly in the pre-dawn light. The stolen car had started whining as he’d initiated the climb and never really gotten better. It gave up at the bottom of a curve with a bang and the jarring grating of metal on metal. Thick, white smoke rose from the hood followed by overheated oil and a spray of coolant liquid. At least the smoke was blending away to nothing: lost in the fog where it wouldn’t attract attention. Dean rummaged through the glove compartment, coming up with a recently expired driver’s license in the name of Michael Young, two crumpled five dollar bills, and a melted candy bar. The name made him snicker and Dean decided to go with it; he’d fix the picture later. Minimal effort sent the car into the ditch, caracoling down to wrap around a tree. Dean shifted the duffle bag on his shoulder, adjusted the gun at the small of his back and walked away without looking back.

It took an hour for the fog to lift, like covers being rolled back. The sun glinted, still low, painting the landscape in shades of emerald. Below him, the land levelled out. Apparently, the crappy little car that could had gotten him all the way through the Appalachian range. It was breathtaking, and Dean resented it deeply, irrationally. Everything, from the golden green fields to the darker evergreens to the small yellow flowers by the side of the road, seemed to be offensive against his senses. Or a personal slight. Brick construction dotted the land, marking agricultural lots with farms and barns old enough that they seemed to have melded with the land. He could see a larger city further away, almost at the horizon. He had no idea where he was, other than somewhere east of Eden. It felt strangely fitting.

He needed to hit the closest town, get some money in his pocket, and figure out his next move. By mid-morning he was sweating, back of his t-shirt plastered to his skin and flannel tied around his waist. The change of elevation had hidden his destination, so he kept walking blindly forward. It reminded him of crawling out of his grave in Idaho, only this time there would be no screeching angels reaching out to him. Dean rubbed at his ribs; he could almost feel the carved runes Cas had put there. They came in handy now, hiding Dean from him as well as the others in the dick squad. His fingertips skated around the edge of the anti-possession tattoo. The smart move would probably be to get it scratched or burnt off and see if he could smoke out. Nothing like literally not being yourself to avoid being found. He let his hand drop. That wasn’t a step he was quite willing to take, not yet. He liked his body, liked the way people looked at him, and the muscle memories of growing up with a drill sergeant instead of a dad. Getting a new host that would feel as comfortable would be a mess.

The rumble of a motor and the hiss of hydraulic brakes behind him made Dean step off to the side of the road out of reflex. He glanced over his shoulder, as the faded blue Mack truck slowed behind him, the driver leaning over and cranking down his window.

“You alright there, son?”

Dean plastered his most harmless expression on, the one he used for marks and waitresses and cops stopping him because the Impala stood out. “Car died,” he said. “No cellphone. Think you could give me a ride to town?”

The man laughed. He had deep-set crows feet on the side of his eyes that sunk even deeper as he did so. His skin was tanned and leather thick, the colour of long hours in the sun. “Those modern gadgets always ditch us when we need them. Hop on. I’m going to Danville, if that’s good enough for you?”

“Anything but here is great!” Dean answered, trying to maintain the friendly facade. It was easier now than a week ago.

The truck’s cab smelled of cheap air freshener and ground in sawdust. There was a cramped living space behind the seats, mattress piled with discarded fast food wrappers and clothes. Not entirely too different from the backseat of the Impala, during lean months of hard hunting. Being the good guy never paid out. The driver was chatty but not curious, and Dean fell into a mindless pattern of small talk. The radio was low and set to some maudlin country station, cut with the static-laced voices of other long-haul drivers on the CB. Dean toyed with the idea of getting rid of the driver and keeping the truck, before dismissing it. A trail of bodies would only get more eyes looking his way. He could always find something else to feed the Mark.

They rounded the city and Dean’s mental map rebooted. He’d been here before, on a hunt though it was a fuzzy distant memory, dating back to when he was content with being John’s lackey. There would be a bar with hunter signs on the door but it shouldn’t be too hard to avoid. He needed money, a plan, and a decent fake ID Sam wouldn’t track down in a hot minute. The first would require nightfall--he was too old now for daytime solicitation. In the meantime, the town should have a Kinko’s or another cheap print shop. The plan could come later.

The print shop was deserted. It was too early for crowds and the wrong time of the year for students in a panic over final projects. The underpaid, overly bored teenager at the counter was studiously focusing on his cell phone and avoiding eye contact. That suited Dean just fine as he settled on a worktable at the back with his fake IDs kit. It didn’t take long to carefully cut out Michael’s unsmiling picture and replace it with his own; fixing the laminated plastic covering went even faster with the ease of practice. Driver’s license were easy, unlike law enforcement badges and security clearances. He paid with a few handfuls of coins, piling quarters, nickels and dimes on the counter like poker chips. Danville was generously furnished in churches, poor on the actual hallowed ground warding and rich on donation boxes. Dean could almost taste the sin dripping from some of the coins, thrown in as a down payment to Heaven. It was only fitting to use them for crime.

Dusk found Dean at a bar, outside of the city proper and without the shadow of a clumsily scratched in sigil. It wasn’t the worst dive he’d ever been in — there was no sawdust on the floor for one — but it was high on that list. The lights were low, the hems of the shorts the waitresses had clearly been ordered to wear were high. It was perfect hunting grounds, filled with transients and easy hustle marks.

Dean smirked at the sudden heat to his right, the empty bar stool suddenly filled with the roiling red mass of Crowley and the thin veneer of his meat suit.

“You always pick the worst ones,” said Crowley.

“I didn’t ask you.” Dean flagged the bartender, ordering a new glass for himself and a cocktail for Crowley. No matter how skeevy the bar, every bartender had at least one favourite drink.

“Ah, but you’re not carrying any hex bags either. It’s not a mistake you’d make... if you wanted to keep me away.” Crowley shrugged slightly, taking his glass and inspecting the contents.

“I knew you’d come. Figured I owed you a chance to talk.” Dean turned on his stool to face Crowley. The demon was too slick, too good at lying not to look at him as he spoke. “Why?”

“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that, sweetheart.”

“Why any of it? Dealer's choice.”

Crowley stared at the liquor, avoiding Dean's eye. He was being too calm, too placid. Dean wanted a reaction, a sign he cared. He wanted to hurt the other man, the squishy soft core under the slick kingly persona.

“Why sell me out to Sam? Don’t tell me it was for the blade, it's useless without me.” He paused, trying to read Crowley’s closed face. “Got bored of me? Did you think I’d make a better lackey once Sam whammied me? ‘Cause I don’t remember that working out so well for you before.”

“I was losing you either way.” Crowley’s answer was soft and aimed at the warped composite bar-top.

“So, if you couldn't have me as a lapdog no one could?”

Crowley shook his head, lips curling into a sneer. “I had hoped that Moose could heal you like he tried to heal me. Restore you to your former self.” He drained the glass, putting on the bar before turning towards Dean. “You’re welcome.”

“So it was all a favour for me? I don't buy it. You’re not that… soft.”

“Well, I couldn't have a rogue knight either, could I? Looks extraordinarily bad for the crown.”

Dean squinted his eyes, taking in the slightly rumpled suit and the little signs of neglect around Crowley. “Go,” he said. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Sam. Let me go. Don’t look for me. Don't send your minions after me.”

“If I do?”

“I know Sam gave you the blade. I will find it and finish what Abaddon started.”

“And become king? No offence, love, but I don't think it’d suit you.”

“I can destroy you without claiming the job. I give zero fucks about throwing hell into chaos.”

Crowley nodded. “I won't make a promise I don’t know if I can keep. Call me. If you change your mind.”

“I won't,” said Dean, but the stool was empty. He tried to tell himself it was what he wanted. He swallowed his own glass, letting the burn of cheap booze burn away the sudden feeling of loss.

The sound of loud catcalls and cheers caught his attention, reminding him of why he had picked this place to begin with. Easy, asshole, drunk targets. He turned around and watched as the waitress twisted away from a table of three guys, mid-twenties. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the leader of their little group thought grabbing the waitress’ ass was the manliest and funniest thing he’d ever done. The girl, barely more than a kid really, walked away with the resigned look of one who didn’t expect things to get better. Dean smiled. This would be almost too easy, but just what the doctor ordered to mend a broken ink-black heart.

A few rounds of pool ate their way through Dean’s seed money but allowed him to play them right like he wanted. Pretending to be drunk was easy, it fit like well-worn jeans. He stepped away from the stunned silent table, pockets heavy with hustled bundles of cash and hair on his neck bristling with heated stares. He hoped one of them would take a swing at him, it would make a great close to the evening’s entertainment. A sharp cry made him turn, eyes narrowing as the ringleader showed his sore loser's sourness by proving he could still overpower another. From the look of the waitress’ braid he’d snagged it and — from the laughter of his cronies — he’d tried for a kiss.

“You don’t have to let them do that, you know,” he said as she came to ask for his order.

“I’m fine. What are you having?”

Dean pulled up his hands in a show of peace. “A beer. Whatever’s cheap. What’s your name?”

“Ximena.” She walked away and Dean picked a corner table for himself, back to the wall and with a good line of sight on the room and door. He settled, fingers drumming on the slightly sticky table, smiling.

The beer was cold and cheap, more akin to vaguely fermented piss than alcohol. Dean doubted that it would have made him drunk even if he hadn’t been a bit more human than human. He peeled a few bills from the bundle in his pocket and placed them on her tray before she left. When she returned, flustered, he was two sips in .

“You gave me the wrong amount,” she said.

“You’re right,” Dean answered, peeling off another $50 bill and handing it to her. “I forgot to tip. Keep the change.”

She frowned at him, dropping the professional smile. “I’m not for sale.”

“I ain’t buying anything,” he said. “Besides, it’s not my money. Keep it, you earned it... Just keep the beers coming.”

She hesitated for a moment then snatched the bill and put it in her pocket before walking away. Dean caught the edge of the miasma of impotent anger at the side of his vision. He drained the beer and signalled for a new one, tipping Ximena extravagantly once again. She looked at him with narrowed eyes and suspicion, but he made sure to remain charming and keep his hands where she could see them.

The kids had left somewhere between his second and third, shooting him murderous looks and muttering amongst themselves as they left. Man would they be pissed when they realized he didn’t have a car to key. The other patrons trickled out as the night progressed, leaving only the most dedicated barflies, half drooling and nearing a total blackout.

“Last call was an hour ago,” said Ximena as she dropped a whiskey shot in front of Dean. “Do you need me to call you a cab?”

Dean shook his head and downed the shot, wincing a bit at the burn. “Wouldn’t have anywhere to tell it to go. Do you have a ride coming to pick you up?”

“Yeah, my brother.” The wariness was back in her voice.

“Good. I’ll stick around until he shows. My spider sense is tingling.”

“And then?”

Dean shrugged. “I’ll pick a direction and walk. It’s all the same to me.”

Ximena gave him a long, searching look then walked away, rousing the other patrons and making sure they made their way out the door, wiping down tables and bar surfaces. Dean gathered his bag and jacket and waited by the door for her to be done. He caught her eye as she started counting the till and stepped outside, settling against the building and into the pre-dawn stillness. Three a.m. was an easy hour to blend into, quiet yet tense, like a breath being held.

Dean heard the whine and rattle of the pale, blue truck well before it turned into the parking lot. It sounded like it was being held together by a wish and a prayer and some barely competent home mechanic, and was driven by a teenager Dean believed to be sixteen as much as he believed he was an actual FBI agent. The kid maneuvered a bit awkwardly to turn around and settled down, sinking into the driver’s seat. Light hit his face from below: either a smartphone or a game console. The kid didn’t see as the two newer cars — their lights turned off and nearly silent in comparison — parked across the street. Dean did. He smiled. He hoped he’d read things right and that he’d get his fight.

The kids from before were drunker and dressed down to jeans and t-shirts, the alcohol making them sway. They’d bought a fourth friend, closer to sober and walking with the demeanour of someone who’d done some time in the army. He reminded Dean of the idiot who’d gone after Sam, minus the monomaniacal dedication. He was probably the enforcer of their little gang, the big gun they called upon when they needed to intimidate people. It was an interesting development.

“You sure ‘bout this, Trev?” asked the guy on the left, pulling at the edge of his shirt. Dean named him Bashful, making the other lackey Dopey.

“You wanna run back home to your mama, you go right ahead. I’m tellin’ you, that bitch can’t keep playing hard to get.”

Dopey pushed Bashful’s shoulder, making him stumble. “Come on man. Live a little.” He giggled, a childish burbling laugh that didn’t fit in his gym-membership fueled frame. “Ain’t like she can go runnin’ to the cops. They’ll just throw her ass back over the fence.”

Keys jangled behind Dean as Ximena locked the door, making him wonder where the owner or manager was, if she was really alone doing the close. She made eye contact with Dean as she stepped away from the door but didn’t say anything, turning to walk towards the truck.

Good girl.

As she stepped away from the awning and into the yellow-tinged light of the parking lot, they started towards her, like lurching, stumbling ineffective bloodhounds. They reminded Dean of the shuffling Croats in the apocalypse vision the angels had woven for him, and also of the warm stink of the hellhound’s breath. He dismissed both memories, shutting them away.

Big Guns took position a bit behind the pack, poised to intercept anyone coming towards them from the road. He was between Ximena and her brother, which might become unfortunate. Bashful circled her, cutting off her retreat to the bar. Despite his vocalized misgivings, this was something he’d done before. Dopey and ‘Trev’ closed the trap, the latter moving immediately into her space. Ximena gripped her purse closer to her body and tried to sidestep around him, only to run into Dopey.

“What’s the hurry, doll? “ Trev asked, trying for smooth and charming. Dean rolled his eyes.

“Dejame en paz, cabron,” she muttered, trying to get some distance. He moved as she did.

“I think she’s afraid we’ll take her tips from her,” said Dopey, pulling at Ximena’s bag. She yelped, but he was bigger and stronger, easily taking the strap away from her shoulder and dangling it out of her reach. “Feels a bit heavy, if you ask me.”

Trev snorted. “‘Course it does. That pretty boy’s been spending my money. It’s only fair I get the service I bought. What kind of wages can a whore earn when she doesn’t put out?”

Bashful shoved her, making Ximena stumble toward Trev and catching herself on his chest and trying to push away. “Now, that’s better,” he drawled.

The truck’s door creaked loudly as it opened and the kid stepped out. His eyes were wide and scared, too much white showing, but his fists were balled and he was breathing hard. Mounting a rescue, how cute. Big Guns intercepted him, twisting one arm behind him, holding him in place with the other across this chest — huge and muscular when the kid was all bones and sinews, growing and underfed. He said something, too low for Dean to hear, but the kid snarled and tried to twist away until he yelped and stilled, shoulder probably on the edge of dislocation.

“Get back in the truck, Juan, it’s ok, just go back and close your eyes.” Ximena voice broke as Dopey put his hands on her waist, pulling her to him in a lewd pretense of a dance. She started talking again, in rapid-fire Spanish, squirming to get away, but Trev caught her wrists and stilled her arms, trapping her.

Dean was bored. They were predictable, and he didn’t particularly fancy a show. Besides, Dopey was a shit dancer, nothing in the hips and hands too greedy. He whistled — a long steady note to make sure he got their attention — and pushed himself off the wall. Dean wished he had enough power to pull the black-eyed trick, something flashy and satisfying. As it was the remnants of the smoky power fluttered between his ribs, or gathered in some vestigial organ space. Like a demonic appendix. He smiled at his own joke, and that apparently registered with Big Guns at least; he pushed Juan back towards the truck and shifted his weight.

The mark sang on his arm. It was a dull, muffled by the blood and the humanity, but it sang nonetheless. It felt like fine drugs and sex. Like coming home. Dean stepped out of the shadow, still smiling. “How ‘bout you try to take on someone who can fight back, boys?”

Bashful startled and reflexively backed away, to be in line with Dopey. He was looking at his friends, uncertain. He’d be the first rabbit to make a run for it.

“Awe, now ain’t that cute,” said Trev. “A fine knight in shining armour you make. There’s four of us shithead, only one of you. And—” He gestured at the parking lot in a sweeping motion. “— No car. You’re a drifter, a thief. The kinda scum nobody’s gonna miss.”

Smiling, Dean didn’t answer right away. He fell into an easy fighting stance, loose and relaxed. “Well, come on,” he said, goading them.

Dopey shoved the girl away and huffed out his chest like the big bad wolf about to bring down some piglet’s house with a punch so telegraphed that Dean half-expected a song to come with it. Dean’s own blow was fast and vicious. He hit Dopey right below the diaphragm with the hard point of his elbow. The man staggered back, gasping for breath. A gargled war cry behind him was all the warning Dean needed and he grabbed Bashful’s arm, using his momentum to send him hurtling into his friend.

“Looks like your odds are going down,” Dean told Trev. He took the time to smooth his shirt, popping the collar in its proper place.

“You piece of shit, you’ll regret this,” said Trev. He held raised his hands in some mimic of a MMA guard. It was better technique than the first two, but he was drunk and blinded by hurt pride. A switchblade twinkled in the bar’s light, clutched tight in the kid’s left hand. Dean snarled. Cheating piece of shit. The first slash went wide and cut nothing but air. Dean grabbed at Trev’s wrist on the even more desperate, off-balance retort and twisted until the boy’s fingers spasmed. It was an easy disarm, no one apparently teaches kids what to do once they faced opposition these days.

A punch to the kidneys sent Dean skidding a few steps to the left, where a waiting boot kicked the back of his knee, sending him to the ground. Bashful had found a hell of a time to grow balls, and somehow Dean had lost sight of Big Guns long enough to get flanked. Sloppy. He scrambled up, palming the knife; he barely felt the cut from the blind grab.

“You sure you want to do this big guy?” he asked. “You seem like you have two brain cells to rub together.” Dean winked at Big Guns, the weaponized version of a wink, then turned to face Bashful. His brief moment of courage seemed to have passed and he raised his hands up in surrender, backing away. Dean patted his jaw, leaving red smears of blood from the cut on his finger, then shoved his knee up as if he was auditioning to be part of the Rockettes on New Year’s Eves. Hopefully, by the time Bashful’s balls dropped again he would have better taste in friends. He dropped to the ground like a sack of crying potatoes. “Two down. Still wanna dance?”

“You fucking bastard, I’ll kill you.” Trev sputtered, rage-filled and almost incoherent. He held his arm close to his chest as if Dean had really hurt him.

“Better get in line, kiddo. There’s probably a lottery system.”

With a snarl, the kid charged him, all haymaker punches and impotent screaming. Dean kicked his knee, hearing the satisfying crack of a dislodged kneecap, turning with him as he fell and smoothly grabbing his jaw. The knife rested across his throat, close enough to shave but not to cut. Much. If the idiot stayed still.

Big Guns was looking at him, his face hard to read and closed off.

“Not going to help your friends after all?” asked Dean.

“Where did you serve?” he answered instead.

Looking over Big Gun’s shoulder Dean saw that Ximena and Juan had climbed into the truck and were driving away safe. Dean chuckled. It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked that, but there was no ring for him to claim tonight. “Here and there,” he answered, and it mostly wasn’t a lie. “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” He dropped the knife, ruffling Trev’s hair. Blood was singing in his veins, just the hint of pain from his hand, the warmth of the booze in his stomach. The Mark purred on his arm, sated. It was a good night to be alive. “Get your friends home, get them some ice and some painkillers. We all walk away.”

“Come on man,” mumbled Trev, “You can take him, don’t just stand there and watch, you fucking coward.”

“Shut up Trev,” said Big Gun, bending to help Bashful up. The kid had tears steadily streaming from his eyes as he gasped for air. “You heard the man. We’re going home and hoping never to see this guy again.”

“Michael,” said Dean. “Name’s Michael.”

“We’re never going to see Michael again, he was never here tonight and you’re a fucking idiot. Get in the car.”

Dean watched them pile in the car and sucked at the almost closed cut on his hand, lapping the blood.


	4. On the Road

The aches were mild and Dean almost wished he had let the idiot crew get a few more good blows in, to give him bruises he could savour. He’d aimed himself vaguely out of town, walking down road’s shoulders and along ditches half filled with cattails. It was warm and quiet and he knew how to cover ground, with steady distance eating strides. He might have considered hitchhiking had there been any traffic, but he doubted he’d have gotten any takers. He knew what he looked like, too old, too worn for the pervs. Too dangerous for everyone else. 

Dean heard the rattle of the truck before it reached him. It groaned and whined and the sound was breaking annoyingly through his post-fight afterglow. The horrible screech of dying brakes made him look over as the truck slowed down beside him. Juan rolled down the window, speaking a hundred miles a minute before the glass was fully out of the way.

“I don’t speak Spanish, spark,” Dean said. He kept walking. He’d need to find a place to crash for a couple of hours, soon. Being human-adjacent was a bore. The kid put the truck back in drive with a metal-on-metal sound that made Dean’s teeth hurt and started following him.

“My mother said to come back and get you and give you a ride,” said the kid in accented but clear English. “She’ll tan my hide if I don’t, come on, man.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. I swear. No funny business. Mama wants to say thank you, and Ximena said you didn’t have anywhere to go. We have a couch, it’s not much, but…”

Dean looked at the kid, really looked at him. He was half hanging out of the car, driving with one hand, looking back at him with intensity. But he wasn’t over eager, he wasn’t naive, maybe just a bit starstruck. Dean stopped walking. “Yeah, ok, sure. What the hell.” 

“Chido.” Juan stopped the tuck and waited for Dean to hop in on the passenger side. “Fair warning, man. Mama is probably going to try to feed you until you feel like hurling. She does that to everyone.”

“Awesome.” Dean leaned on the window and willed himself to ignore the noises around him. He’d learned to tune out souls in Hell, he could survive a car trip. The landscape rolled by in reverse as the kid pulled a U-turn. They didn’t go back to town, turning off in a country road Dean had barely noticed. 

Fields bordered the road on both side and the road itself narrowed to a single lane, uneven and filled with plot holes. The truck’s lights gleamed over the tired aluminum siding of a series of trailers. They had been laid out in long rows and strung together with messy electrical wiring. Dean could see the lines tangle and jump all over the place, illuminated in some places by fairy lights, of all things. Juan stopped in front of one, navigating easily into an unmarked parking spot. 

“Well come on, then,” he said, getting out of the car. 

There were barely any sounds other than the insects and rodents scurrying in the fields. It felt right and homey if bare-boned and inpermanent. It felt like it was on the edge of not being a place at all, or perhaps of becoming one. Something about the ambiguity was soothing. For the first time in months, Dean became aware of his breathing and of his body. His, only his, he couldn’t feel the puppet string of the Mark. Dean took a deep breath, just because he could, then berated himself silently. Breakthrough of the century there. 

Juan didn’t notice his hesitation or didn’t care, opening the door of the trailer and stepping in. Light spilled out, from a bare bulb hanging by the door. There was darkness beyond. A woman stepped out of the trailer, giving Dean a long appraising look. She squinted in the bad light and had to crane her neck to look Dean in the eye. 

“So you’re him then,” she said, at length. Her English was heavily accented, more than Dean expected from listening to Ximena and Juan. 

“I guess I am?” he answered. She sniffed in answer and turned back towards the door. Dean wasn’t certain if it was a positive or negative assessment. 

“Come on in, breakfast is ready.”

Dean shrugged and followed her in. The trailer was small and cramped, but clean. Two boys, no older than ten, sat at the small card table eating in the automaton-like fashion of those not yet properly awake. They didn’t look up when he passed by. The older woman was busy in the small kitchen space, deftly removing tortillas from a warm pan and adding new ones in their place. She handed plates to Juan and Dean and shooed them over to the living room. The couch there had seen better days, with blankets rolled to the side as if someone used it as a bed; as had the armchair, worn down in the exact silhouette of a person. Juan sat cross-legged on the floor and Dean perched on the sofa’s edge, balancing the plate on his knees. 

The plate had two of the warm tortillas, with bits of scrambled eggs and stewed beans. Red sauce covered everything, more on Juan’s plate than his own. Dean’s plate had some shredded cheese. He folded the bread and took a bite, taken aback by the intensity of the flavours. It was spicy and creamy and everything was so... present. Dean had missed food tasting like food instead of like dust and memories. Juan chuckled and Dean realized he might have groaned out loud. 

“Too spicy?”

“Hell no. Just good. Your mom can cook, man.” 

A wooden spoon hit him on the shoulder. “No swearing in this house.” The woman turned to Juan. “Go wake your father.” The teen scrambled up, leaving his plate behind. He knocked and opened one of the three doors at the other end of the trailer.

“Sorry,” Dean apologized, automatically. “Thanks for the food, ma’am.” 

“I’m Maria Isabella,” she said. “Eat. Eat.” She turned back to the kitchen, busying herself with two more plates. 

Somewhere in Dean’s subconscious, something small and hurt winced as she said her name. It went away as fast as it had come. He didn’t dwell on it, choosing instead to concentrate on the food. Being the shining knight minus the stupid armour had its perks. A man walked out of the room, pausing briefly by Dean before sitting down in the armchair. The man’s skin was dark and tanned, lined by work out in the sun and worry and not enough laughter. Maria Isabella brought him a plate and spoke to him in Spanish in a hushed tone. Juan joined in, less hushed and with animated movements. Retelling the events of the night, judging by the slightly starstruck looks he sent Dean. 

The man grunted when they were done. “Thank you,” he said, then fell silent and ate. When he was done he dropped his plate in the kitchen and left, the two younger boys trailing behind him. 

“You sleep here,” said Maria, pointing at the couch. 

“I don’t want to take anyone’s sleeping spot.” 

“No worries,” said Juan. “I’ll sleep in the big bed and Sis is sleeping in the other room. The twins are going with Father to the tobacco fields. No one needs the couch.” 

Dean frowned as he examine the furniture. It was better than a ditch or under a tree out in the open. The blankets were thin and the cushions lumpy. But he’d slept on worse. He settled, twisting and folding until most of him fit and was out as soon as he closed his eyes. His dreams were masked in smoke and red mist. It wasn’t a replay of memories from Hell, and for that he was grateful.

Music and laughter woke him. It was light outside, streaming through gaps in the yellowed curtains he hadn’t noticed last night. Dean rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and stretched. The trailer was silent, with the subtle quality of being inhabited. Ximena and her brother were probably still sleeping, and their mother was nowhere to be found. He rolled to his feet, winced when the bones in his back cracked loudly into place, and walked outside with hunter honed stealth. The music washed over him, happy and brassy with good rhythm and totally unlike anything Dean ever fed the Impala’s cassette deck. There were children around, running and laughing. Some were kicking a ball and the younger ones were caught in a game Dean couldn’t understand but seemed deadly serious. Some younger teens stood around, keeping an eye on things, mostly girls. They glanced at Dean and ushered the kids further away. 

The blue truck was still there, the faded paint more apparent in the sun, patchy and streaky like it had been painted over a few times and the paints didn’t quite match in colour. Dean stared at it for a minute then made up his mind. Popping the hood open was easy, even if what he saw made Dean swear under his breath. He dug through his bag for a rag and settled on a t-shirt so worn and thin tearing it apart barely required any effort.

Maria Isabella came home sometime later, dropped off by another woman driving a car only slightly younger than Dean. She gave him a long hard look before disappearing inside, clutching her bag of groceries. He heard voices coming from inside, whisper-shouting and aggravated.

“What the? What are you doing to my car?” Juan’s voice was sleep-rough and angry all rolled into one bundle of indignant teenager cracking. The register slide would have been almost comical if he wasn’t looking at Dean like he was sizing him up for a fight. “You can’t just mess with my truck. What the fuck?”

Dean wiped his hands on his shirt-turned-rag and straightened up, giving the kid an unimpressed look. The Mark rolled, barely even interested. He was sun warm and fed, and the fight wouldn’t be worth it. “I’m giving you some breathing room. You’re going to need to get a new transmission sooner rather than later, and you’ve got a leak somewhere. I topped off the fluids so the gearing in there can have a snowball’s chance in hell of remaining functional. Fixed a loose belt and a few minor things while I was at it.” He stuffed the rag into the back pocket of his jeans. 

“You… you’re a mechanic?” 

“Close enough,” Dean said with a shrug. “I could deal with the transmission if you have somewhere I can get the parts.”

The kid frowned, dropping his gaze. His entire body language changed, deflating until he looked defeated. “Can’t afford to pay for that.”

“Suit yourself.” Dean squinted up at the sky. The sun was high, closer to noon. Late to make a head-start in the day but he figured he’d already overextended his welcome. “Got anywhere around here I can take a shower?” 

“Huh, yeah. I’ll show you.” Juan was startled and he stared at Dean like he was an alien or an Arkham Asylum escapee. Did no one ever teach people to say thank you nowadays? He led Dean down the row of trailers to a wooden structure with two ill-fitted doors. “Men’s are on the left,” he said and turned away. 

Dean did some mental math with the number of trailers and of people living in them and this being the only bathing facility. Showering with socks it was, with an option of burning them afterward. The water pressure was low, but the temperature wasn’t bad. The pipes probably ran close to the surface and were getting warmed by the sun. It felt good as it fell on his back and he scrubbed away the sweat and grease. Maybe he’d go east, all the way east and go see the ocean. Get on a boat, find his way to some island where the rum flows like water and the sands are clothing optional. Yeah, that sounded like a plan. 

There were two elderly men in the small locker area when Dean was done and getting dressed. They glanced at him and then away as if he wasn’t a stranger in this place. The kid was still outside, pacing and texting on a phone that was old years ago. Dean winced, he remembered how annoying texting on flip phones was. Strange how some memories stuck with you while having no value at all.

“Did you mean it?” asked Juan, as soon as he stepped outside. “That you could fix it?” 

“No. I was talking out of my ass for shits and giggles.” Dean rolled his eyes and shifted his duffle bag on his back. He could feel the dampness from the towel soaking through. Mildew was going to be his companion soon enough. “If you have the parts I can swap it out in a couple of hours. I’d only be doing the poor thing a favour, it doesn’t deserve to be tortured like this.” He looked past him, at the one-lane road leading out and away, there was nothing out there for him, no one waiting, no mission. No hunt. “Why? You got them?” 

“Maybe. Mama said to ask you to stay for lunch. We can talk to Father when he comes back.”

Instincts kept Dean alive, as a drifter, a hunter, a poor kid living in dirty motels on the wrong side of town. He looked at the liquid brown eye of the kid, at the barely contained nervous energy, at the surrounding cross between a camping ground and a shanty down and none of his instincts flared up. “Yeah, sure,” he said. 

Lunch was bean soup and an apple. Ximena was awake, helping her mother make dough for tortillas, kneading and rolling the balls of dough flat. The kitchen counter was uneven and the rolling pin made rhythmic clattering noises on every pass. Dean ate outside, sitting on the trailer’s steps. He could hear the women talking behind him, their voices hushed and their emotions hard to read. They blended into the music so Dean shrugged and let it go. If it was about him they’d tell him soon enough. And neither of them was a threat, even together, even with his back open. 

He was almost done with the soup when the second truck parked across the lane. It was more recent than the blue one, only by a fraction of a decade, and in better condition. The two kids exited first, listless with bone-deep exhaustion and too much time under the sun. Dean stood and let them pass by him and up into the trailer. The man barely glanced at him before walking in as well, only to leave almost immediately, carrying a bag and pushing one of the uncooperative twins before him. Showers, Dean gathered. Sam hadn’t been a fan as a kid either. As he waited for them to come back, Dean felt restless. He was an outsider, he didn’t fit, it was being made plain as day. He felt exposed, there was no way to slip away on a one-lane road in broad daylight. Dean scratched at his arm, only stopping when he became aware one of his nails was broken. His forearm looked like a cat had gone at it, leaving scratches up and down. 

It didn’t take longs for the kids to come back, whispering to each other, still exhausted but the edge of it taken off. They didn’t look at Dean when they walked in. The man did, stopping to stand between him and the door.

“Juan tells me you fixed his truck.” 

Dean shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Gave him a couple weeks if I’m lucky.” He shrugged, unconvinced. Winchester luck was rotten and he’d used up too much of it in the past clusterfuck of years. 

The man nodded, once. “It will break again, soon. We don’t have money now for repairs.” he stopped, and Dean could see him trying to find the shapes of the words for what he wanted to say. This man did not like asking for anything. There was pride there.

“I could do it with the parts,” said Dean, relaxing into casual. “There’s probably a junkyard somewhere ‘round here, so I could get those cheap from a junker.” He paused a bit longer than needed, reeling him in. “Don’t know if there’s much for jobs in town for me to stick around though.” He kept the front up, earnest but not too much. Just a drifter. A drifter letting an old man have an easy out. It’s a damn sight easier than pretending to be a Park Ranger or FBI or Teddy bear doctor. He watched for the little signs, the frown, the shuffle. He knew he had him on the hook.

“Stay tonight. Tomorrow, you come with me. I will ask the crew boss to let you in. If you can work, there is work.” He smiled then, something small and vicious and Dean was reminded of his father, when he wasn’t too far gone into the bottle. “Not easy work.”

“Never asked for easy,” said Dean.

“I’m Rodrigo,” said the man, extending his hand. “Rodrigo Delgado. You will need a hat.”

“Michael, “ answered Dean as he shook Rodrigo’s hand. “Michael Young.” He didn’t even hesitate on the name.

Tomorrow ended up being brutally early. Dean had figured the five a.m. greeting had been some display to come and gawk at the strange man. He hadn’t counted on it being routine. Maria Isabella was up before the crack of dawn, mixing dough for the day’s tortillas. She seemed perplexed and confused when Dean offered to help and shooed him out of the kitchen. They left once Rodrigo had eaten, with a packed lunch to share and a few bottles of water. Dean ran the hat through his hands, flipping the flap of fabric that went over his neck. It looked faintly like fabric overkills, especially combined with the thin long sleeved shirt and the navy blue bandana Ximena had shoved at him when she had come home. 

By the time noon rolled around, Dean was thankful for the basket of gifts. He had muscles that ached in ways he hadn’t ached in years, not since he was a teenager and Sam had pissed John off badly enough to get them the full-on drill sergeant workout. The long handled secateurs helped, but he had to bend as he cut the stalk of the tobacco plants, laying them down to one side. He tried to keep up with the other workers on either side of him, though their movements were smoother and they didn’t fumble so much, cutting blind under the fat green leaves. More workers were behind them, spearing the cut plants onto sticks and carrying the sticks to a truck where they were counted and hung. From the annoyed chatter behind him, Dean gathered they were being paid by the stick. The guys spoke too fast and in a dialect that was too different from the telenovelas for him to catch. Marco sat in the truck and acted as an interpreter as best he could. The teenage boy with the clipboard beside him look bored, and somehow radiated smugness. 

Felipe would tag out his brother every other hour, and whichever twin was not on the truck was helping with the lighter labour: laying down sticks for the spearing mostly. Whenever Dean would stop to stretch his lower back the kid would step in and grab the cutting tool from him, keeping the pace. He could tell them apart mostly from the fact that Marco would roll his eyes at him as he did so. The twins tired easily, but they were wicked fast for their size. 

The crew boss exchanged a few words with the teenager and rang an old school bell to call for a break. Overhead, the sun was relentless, leaving his shirt was plastered over his back, stiff and sticky from where the sweat had time to dry and leave behind salt residue. The dirt path was scalding as they sat down to eat with no shade anywhere to be found. Dean dribbled some of the water on the bandana to clean his hands and wipe his face. It came away smeared with dirt and coconut scented gunk. 

“Drink the water,” said Rodrigo. “It does no good in the bottle. Or on the cloth.” He sat next to Dean and the twins joined them, splitting the boxed lunch. Maria Isabella had made empanada, filled with the same savoury beans she served at breakfast but mixed with some shredded chicken. 

“Yeah, thanks,” said Dean. There was nowhere to refill the water bottle, but Dean could live with the sacrifice more than he could stand to eat with dirty hands. He downed the rest of the bottle anyway. “How long do we have left today?” 

“Us, a few hours,” Rodrigo answered with a shrug. 

“Then they need to bring the trucks back to the barns and hang the tobacco to dry,” said Marco, picking up on the explanation. “We don’t do that part. They recheck the counts then too.” He frowned as he said it, and Dean knew the count would always come back lower, somehow. No matter how many time he doubled checked the pimpled teenager’s clipboard. 

“Yeah, I bet they do,” said Dean. There wasn’t much to add, really. 

A sharp whistle rang and the workers scrambled up and back into place. They fell into the rhythm as if they hadn’t stopped, like soldiers at on the parade grounds or pieces of an automaton. Dean paused before joining them, looking over the field on the other side of the road. Men in heavy duty biohazard suits were walking the rows, with large canisters on their back. They were spraying the plants, making a thick white mist rise in front of them. It hung there like dense smoke, wafting lazily with the wind.

“Come on Gringo,” said the crew boss, pushing Dean’s shoulder. “First day, no lazing around. I took you on as a favour, don’t make me regret it.” 

Dean moved and retrieved the cutters from Felipe and took back his spot. “What are they doing over there?” he asked Santiago, looking over his shoulder.

“Spraying for pests.”

“Isn’t that shit poison?”

“That,” he said with weary resignation, “is why we’re working in this field and not that one. No today, anyway.” 

The man walked away and Dean looked at the single lane road and the men in hazmat suits. The next time the kids came around him, he made sure they had something covering their faces, tying his damp bandana around Marco. He didn’t complain, and Dean caught the crew boss’ subtle nod of approval. 


	5. Green Leaves

The routine came easy. It was hard work that left Dean exhausted and sore and his mind staticky, empty from it all. Wake up early, go to the fields, work under the sun, come home to an overcrowded trailer and deeply unsanitary showers. 

On the fourth day, the twins didn’t come with them. 

Dean had watched, idly curious, as they had gone straight to bed the night before. Marco had spent the night throwing up, miserable and heaving up water, bile, and then nothing at all. Felipe had been dizzy and complaining of cramps. Both of them finally slept, exhaustion claiming them in restless fits. They were covered in sweat. In another life, Dean had nursed another kid through most childhood illnesses and the aftermath of neglect. He knew it wasn’t a stomach bug or anything benign. They had begun working the second field the previous day. Dean sighed. Monsters and demons… and humans. 

There hadn’t been a word spoken in the morning, but everyone was wearing long sleeves in the field. Gloves, bandanas over faces, torn rags over hands for those who didn’t have gloves and couldn’t afford a pair. They worked fast and quiet, with a lot less banter and no blaring radio. When they broke for lunch, Dean wasn’t the only one wasting water to clean his hands before eating. The crew boss walked around, handing out wet napkins, the cheap kind you would find at all you can eat buffets that didn’t otherwise care much for food sanitation. Dean caught the exaggerated eye roll from the clipboard-wielding teenager. They broke early after lunch, though there was still plenty of daylight to go. Some of the men grumbled, but they kept their voices low and didn’t meet Rodrigo’s eye. Some of them were coughing, eyes ringed in red, and they looked glad to be done even if it meant docking on the week’s pay. 

Dean looked at the receding truck carrying the harvested plants and the barn, big and brown against the green of the leaves in the distance. He leaned into the pick-up, balancing against the scalding hot frame to speak to Rodrigo.

“You go on ahead. Don’t wait up.”

“Are you sure?” He paused, either hesitating or looking for words. 

“Yeah. I’ll make my way back, don’t worry. I’m not running on you. Got a few things I need to deal with.”

Rodrigo looked at Dean, frowning, for a few moments then nodded. He turned over the motor and Dean closed the door, stepping away with a friendly slap on top of the vehicle. He watched as the dust plume faded as he drove away. Dean stuck his hands into his pockets and started walking, fighting the urge to whistle. He had time. The fields were empty, without even the strident buzzing of the cicadas.

The barn was closed by the cheap padlock and the security system was an even cheaper camera. Dean made quick work of both and slipped inside, closing the door behind him. No use raising any alarms, not yet anyway. The barn was dark but well ventilated. The plants on the sticks hung on racks and swayed gently, drying, curing. There was plenty of space left, and Dean could guess the sweet scent would only increase as more got harvested. As it was, it only made his life easier. There wasn’t much for him to find in the main space, but the back held a small bathroom with running water and an office. The computer was old, a beige monstrosity that probably still required floppy disks to boot. There was a box of the brightly coloured squares on the desk, with messily written labels. Dean shook the mouse and the screen groaned to life, the cathode ray setup clearly fighting the command and cascading distorted colours as it warmed up. The password prompt stared at Dean, its text cursor blinking like a tease. He looked around for a post-it or a reminder, while absently trying the usual “password” and “admin” prompt. Just his luck that he found the one backwater inventory computer with an owner that was a fan of info-sec. 

Sunset was flooding the barn with slanted light by the time he cracked the password, and Dean’s patience was running out. The darkness might work in his favour, but he had hoped for more time on location, not locked away and picking at a keyboard. He usually delegated this part for a reason. 

It took remembering how to get around library logins, with a side of usurping information from police stations and nurses, but Dean eventually got through. Most of the files were excel spreadsheets, crude but effective. Dean glanced at the numbers and corrected a few of them, small adjustments here and there, just fair and square. He was more interested in the payroll information, but that proved lacking. He moved on to bills, tracking his way up the supply chain until he found the man in charge, third-generation owner of the farm and, ultimately, decision maker. A locked storage unit offered no opposition as Dean gathered a few more supplies, plan loosely falling into place. The house wasn’t far, he’d make it there for bedtime. He locked up behind himself as he left. 

For the first time since leaving Kansas, Dean wished he had a cellphone. It was a bad idea, too easy to track, but he realized how much he had come to rely on the stupid instant GPS mapping. It would have shown him the proper roads and access points to his destination, instead of him stumbling through the backcountry and tripping his way down the stone retaining wall that surrounded the farmhouse. It hadn’t hurt, except his pride, but he’d ripped his jeans and that annoyed him. 

The house was dark and slumbering in the way the houses of boring civilians tended to. It wasn’t large and was probably several generations old. Weather-stained wood siding peeling in spots and showing layers of increasingly dirty whites betrayed the fact that the house hadn’t been shown proper care through casual inertia. A screen flickered in one window on the upper level, the colours too bright and the flashes too fast for late night TV. Dean slipped inside through the kitchen door. It was unlocked and the hinges well oiled so that it made no sound. The naïve display of trust in a fair universe left a sour note in his mouth. Residual heat from the oven made his stomach grumble. The kitchen smelled like chicken and roasted potatoes. Maybe he’d help himself on the way out. 

Old farmhouses weren’t built to be sprawling mansion and the layout was easy to guess. Utilities at the back, public rooms towards the front and bedrooms up a staircase, somewhere near the front door. It was standard enough to remind Dean of dozens of other houses, other hunts. The plaster walls were painted in pastel colors and for all they blocked the lines of sight they did nothing to insulate against noise. There would be two kids upstairs if he was judging by the size of the bicycles left outside; at least one not asleep from the lights he’d seen dancing in the window. The father was in the living room, and Dean heard the soft clink of ice in a tumbler. Some sort of hard liquor, on the rocks. Dean approved, both the choice of beverage and the fact that it just made things easier. There was an empty spot in the driveway. Wherever the missus was, it wasn’t here. 

Dean settled in the underlit tiled expense of the laundry room as the other man walked towards the kitchen. The partially closed door gave him a sliver of view as he sat on the washing machine, pulling his feet off the floor so that nothing would look amiss. For a moment, he thought he’d been found as the man stopped by the door, staring into the mid-distance. He was middle-aged and rotund. Not fat, but water soft, compared to the people who actually worked his fields and netted him his money. He was clean-shaven, and the hand he ran down his face was smooth and manicured. Dean held his breath as he waited for the glass to be rinsed and put away. The man started walking again, shuffling steps around the bend and up the stairs. 

The bed creaked and Dean unfolded, walking carefully so the floor wouldn’t betray him. Lisa had thought him paranoid with his rounds at night. Even without the salt lines, it was ridiculously easy to enter a home when people felt safe. A little fear would only do them good in the long run. 

When his preparations were complete, he walked into the master bedroom.

The bedroom was cluttered and perfectly normal, which annoyed Dean. On some level, he would have been happier with a crappy villain’s lair, but it was a perfectly normal bedroom, with matching nightstands, discount IKEA rug under the foot of the bed and lots of family pictures on the wall. The man was sleeping on his side, staying to his half of the bed, the other half undisturbed. It was almost sweet. Dean sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped his hand, hard, against the mouth and nose of the man. He flexed his fingers to dig into the soft flesh of the cheeks and waited for the immediate panic and thrashing to subside. It was a lackluster pain and Dean itched for a blade, though the muffled whimper and confused glare did sweeten the deal. Once the man’s eyes started rolling back he moved his hand a bit, letting him breathe in through his nose.

“Now that I have your attention, Mr. Beatty,” said Dean, “we need to talk. And by we, I mean I. You stay quiet, you get to breathe. Am I am clear?” Dean waited for the man to nod, smiling when he stayed silent. The mask covering his face would hinder the effect, but it and the thick leather gloves were probably for the best lest he summoned an FBI inquiry or worse: his brother.

“Excellent, it seems that we have an understanding—” He moved his hand a bit further away, and the man gulped in air in a desperate attempt to fill his lungs. “We’re going to talk about your business practices. Personally, I don’t give a shit about you peddling your crap as organic grown. But I could call your buyers about that. I doubt they would be as understanding. “ He paused until he got a nod. “But you see, David—may I call you David? I’m gonna call you David—You see, what bugs me is that while the people who buy your product made a choice to slowly kill themselves, the people who work for you in your fields didn’t.” 

He waited, letting minutes tick by. Minutes were an eternity to a panicked brain, Dean knew; some of the best tricks he’d learned in hell weren’t about the knife at all. He could see the figurative gears turning in Beatty’s mind, the almost cute frown of concentration. The sound of a coughing fit rose from one of the other bedrooms, wheezing and sustained. Beatty looked at Dean, his eyes growing wide. He knew. Dean squeezed again, cutting off his airflow until the fight burnt out of him. 

“Yes. Now the question is: exactly how much of the stuff did I stash under your kid’s pillow? Enough for an asthma attack? Enough to make him real sick? You’ll get to find out soon enough. But now you know how that feels.” Dean lifted his hand and wiped the glove off on the bedspread. “Don’t make me come back.” 

Going back the way he came, Dean smirked as he listened to the panicked steps across the hall and into the kid’s bedroom. He stopped by the kitchen and grabbed the roast chicken leftovers and the bag of sliced bread. A good deed had a way of working up his appetite.

It was dawn by the time Dean made his way to the trailer camp, sweat from walking making his shirt stick to his back. But his stomach was still full of pilfered homemade food and his pocket was lined with easy money made on the edge of town before he found himself a ride. He was smiling, feeling loose and energized, and not an iota sleepy. The good mood buoyed him past the disapproving stare as he gently rasped his knuckle on the trailer door. Maria Isabella was up, as he’d predicted, and she glared daggers at him. There was anger in the lines of her mouth and in the hunched set of her shoulders.

“I missed curfew,” Dean said, voice soft. “I know.”

“You are no child of mine,” she answered, her tone like glaciers cracking in winter. “But there is work and if you don’t go it is on us. We lose face. And respect. Maybe there will be no work here, for us. In the future.”

“Which you can’t afford. Don’t worry about me. It won’t be an issue.” 

She huffed but didn’t answer, unconvinced and angry. Dean walked in and checked on the twins. They were still sickly looking, pale and covered in cold sweat. The room reeked of illness and he cracked a window, before making a second trip to bring back a cold rag for each of their brows. 

When Ximena got home, Maria Isabella’s anger had simmered down to a lower glacial age. It was still present, crowding the space in the already crowded trailer, but now Dean could see the exhaustion on it, the worry. The pain. Dean heard the phone ring in the bedroom and Rodrigo’s voice. He didn’t move, bowing his head a bit, focusing on his self-assigned nurse aide role. He did, however, grin, as he heard the hushed discussion, first one-sided on the phone, then more animated in the kitchen, with Juan and Ximena and Maria Isabella chiming in. Marco was awake and looking at him, eyes rimmed with red but giving a surprisingly good suspicious glare. Dean winked and shushed him before getting out of the room. 

The adult — and near-adult — Delgados were all standing in the kitchen and living room area, still talking animatedly, with hand movements enhancing the words. Rodrigo still held his cellphone, uncertain, waiting for it to ring again. 

“Is there a problem?” asked Dean. They startled as if they had forgotten his presence or not expected him to speak. Juan pinched himself hard like he was trying to wake from a dream. Ximena rolled her eyes.

“Santiago called,” said Juan, recovering first. He caught Dean’s confused expression and added quickly “Said today was a day off for all the workers on the Beatty’s farm.”

“We still getting paid?”

“Yeah, he’ll average the numbers from the rest of the week.” 

Dean nodded. Juan was bouncing a bit, on the balls of his feet, like a kid at Christmas in those Lifetime movies where the snow was made of shredded plastic shopping bags. Rodrigo and Maria Isabella were still talking to each other, but Ximena was silent and stared at Dean with a wondering expression. He avoided eye contact with her. “Is that unusual?” he asked Juan instead.

“Very,” Rodrigo answered, finally putting down the phone on the countertop. “It has never happened, in my years and in my father’s years. No pay when there is no work.” He sounded wary. 

“Why question it?” Dean pointed at Juan with his chin. “When that one wakes up we can try for the local junkyards and fix that truck.” 

“Eat first,” said Maria Isabella. She shook her head as she said it, strands of hair escaping and framing her face in a soft greying halo. “You are very lucky. Have an angel watching over you!”

“Used to.” Habit schooled his features into a seamless mask. His expression didn’t falter, but there was wistfulness in the reflection of his gaze as he looked out the window. “It’s not an issue, anymore.”

Junkyards everywhere smelled the same. A mix of sun-warmed metal, rust, dust, and the decaying otherness of degrading rubber. Dean followed the surly worker through the lanes of car corpses. The man was smaller than Dean and leaner, thinner, like he lived off nails and celery. He also had a bad chewing tobacco habit and he stopped every few meters to spit out some of the dark brown liquid. Dean made sure to stay in the middle of the gravel path, where it was dry. 

It had taken some effort, but Juan was waiting in the truck, where his nervous energy was contained. Dean only hoped the closed environment wouldn’t amplify it: if the kid vibrated any more, he would step right out of his skin. A day off and the promise to swap out a dying transmission for a slightly less moribund one was like some miracle apparently. Dean scoffed. Miracles tended to suck a whole lot more. 

“These should run. On left’s been here longest. I can make a deal on it.” The man spoke in short sentences, his words sharp as if they hurt on the way out. He punctuated them with the wet squish of the tobacco in his cheek. The trucks were old and rusty, but standard enough that the swap would work. The cheapest option might even have parts that ran for three months before failing in a dramatically interesting way. 

“Red one looks fresh, I’ll go with that.” 

The man laughed, or barked, a short sound that was near enough. “Yeah, rekkon that’d be wise.” he moved towards the truck. “You got a number I can call when it’s ready?” 

“Nope,” said Dean. “I got hands to help take it apart. And I’ll need a recommendation of somewhere with a lift to work.” 

The man gave him an assessing glance then shrugged. “Yeah, I bet you do. Let’s get this done. Then I’ll see.”

Tobacco-chewing-Blake ended up making good on his promise of finding Dean a workspace to put the transmission back into Juan’s car. It was a degree too clean, too well equipped, too deserted to be fully on the legitimate side of things. In a movie, it’d be shot with that obnoxious blue gel filter. Dean wasn’t familiar enough with gang tattoos and affiliations to guess exactly on whose turf he was currently lying down, flat on his back on a surprisingly smooth creeper. He tried not to think about how exposed it made him, or how many bad hooker jokes his mind was trying to make at once. Juan was chatting with the two mechanics and the manager type — wearing a leather jacket a notch above what really should be chosen as wardrobe around engine grease — their voices echoing around, bouncing off stainless steel cabinets and power tools. The soft/sharp sound of new playing cards being rifled made Dean curse. He dropped the ratchet he’d been holding, loudly.

“Hey kid, kick that back to me, will you?” he called out. Dean could almost feel the teenage-appropriate eye roll as Juan walked back across the bay and nudged the tool with his toes. Dean swung himself so he could see Juan’s face from beneath the car instead of looking at his scuffed sneakers. “Those guys would eat you whole and spit out the bones if they get you at cards. You can’t afford that.”

“No they wouldn’t” Juan had dropped his tone to match Dean’s. He wasn’t, however, meeting his eye.

“Yeah. They would.”

“How can you say that?”

Dean shrugged and scurried back under the truck with a push of his heels against the floor. “Hard as hell to con a conman, kiddo. Can be done, but at least I know when the other person is dealing from the bottom.” He could almost smell the booze and the cologne of the witch as he swept up the years off his life. His left arm ached with the memory of the heart attack that mistake had cost him. “Well… most of the time, anyway.”

The answer and the probable waterfall of questions that would have followed were drowned by the opening of the garage door. The card game was forgotten and Dean scooted out from under the car, wiping his hands on his grease rag. He was about done anyway, and he was curious. The two guys that had been just hanging around until now were setting up a different bay, efficient and quick. The older, or at least sharper eyed, manager-type stayed by the door, taking a look around before closing it. Checking for cops. Dean took a look at the car, noting the scratches around the window from the slim jim. Then he did a double take. 

Classic cars were his thing, his hobby, where Dean had always felt at home. This one was not a classic, not quite, too new by a decade or so. But it had the nice lines, a huge ‘I need to carry a body’ trunk and a low rumbling motor that promised speed and power in a chase. It was also covered in warding, hand painted pinstripes, matte against the pearlescent paint. Whoever had done this had spent a lot of time on it and had gotten the whole thing professionally clear coated. Dean couldn’t identify the wards, the lines and dots of voodoo veves were not his style; but he could feel the intent of them. Protection, discretion. Location.

“Shit,” he said. “Give me a hand, we need to be out of here, like yesterday.” 

A scream cut around the space before Juan could move. One of the men was holding his hand, hunched over as the pain folded him in half. “What kind of motherfucker puts acid traps on their cars?” asked the one next to him. It might have been a trick of the light, but Dean could swear one of the veve was a fraction of a shade darker, closer to blood red than bright scarlet. The blood from the man’s ruined hand hissed as it hit the concrete.

“Yeah, ok,” said Juan. 

The one who had been burned had left, and Dean could have told him to save his money. No clinic would be able to help, beyond wrapping bandages over the wound. When he surfaced the crew had gathered again and had apparently decided to forgo subtlety, crowbars ready to get the trunk open. 

“I so wouldn’t do that,” said Dean, low so that his voice would carry without seeming to.

“Why?”

“Someone who booby-traps the handle? Probably has some other deterrents in place.” It was a logical answer, easier to explain than the idea of hexes and wards and the winding cobra strike of power Dean could feel. He wanted out of there, fast. The guys either heard him or came to the same conclusion and backed-away to regroup. 

Even with the extra pair of hands, it took Dean a solid twenty minutes to finish securing the new transmission shaft and make sure everything was connected properly. He felt the passing of each minute, like nails tapping down his spine. It figured that of all the chop shops he could have been in, he was here, and now. He kept jumping at every noise, paranoia rising in his gut like a twisting knot. Any minute now would be the practiced quiet footfall and the click of a safety being released before the deafening gunshot. Or maybe a blade, silver, quick and quiet. 

They almost got clear before the owner of the car opened the door and walked in like he owned the place, slow and deliberate. He glanced around the room and touched the brim of his trilby, tightly woven rust-red straw, when he spotted Dean. So much for staying incognito. 

“I believe,” he said, turning to the car thieves, “that you have what is mine.” He scratched at the graying patch of beard on his chin. “I will be leaving with it. How _you_ will leave here, is entirely in your hands.”

“Juan—” Dean spoke without moving, he didn’t want to break the line of sight on the hunter, “—get in the truck and see if it will start.” Dean’s heartbeat picked up, adrenaline flowing in his veins. This wasn’t a fight he wanted, but the rush was sweet and familiar. And addictive. 

“Michael,” said Juan, because the kid had the self-preservation of a gnat, “you know this guy? I mean, you knew the car was bad news, I mean…”

The hunter smiled. It was a small thing, knowing and dangerous. And a bit seductive, if Dean was being completely honest. He could only hope that is how others read his own smiles when he was in that mood. Not that he could rock the brightly coloured geometric shirt and the hip-length leather jacket, it commanded attention above what Dean needed on a good day. “No,” he said, as he gave Dean a slow appraising look from head to toes and back up again. “The man I thought I knew would never answer to _that_ name.” He turned and pulled out a gun from beneath the jacket. He pointed it at the shop manager, no longer smiling. “I do suggest you listen to your friend, _Michael_. I have business to attend to.” He winked. “I do trust we will not meet again.”

Dean nodded and backed into the truck, driving it out of the shop and all the way back to the camp in silence, knuckles gripped deathly white on the steering wheel. 

He kept glancing at the mirror every few hundred meters, but no one followed them, not though the light city traffic and not beyond. Juan remained thankfully silent, a little pale, like he was the one who had seen a spectre of his past. The kid disappeared into the trailer as soon as Dean threw the car in park. Not that he blamed him. He should probably make himself scarce. The thought was bitter as he turned it over in his mind. He’d been careful and he’d been _good._ This was so much bullshit. 

He’d expected Rodrigo, when the door opened, about to give him his walking papers. As such he was surprised to hear Ximena speak. 

“Did you know him?” she asked. Her voice was level, there was no accusation there, but she worked in a bar. Too much practice with volatile guys to trust it. 

“No. But I know, knew, guys like him.” It was the truth. She didn’t need to know he was one of them. Dean had never figured out a good way to bring out the ‘I’m essentially an underpaid professional hitman’ career talk, no when there was no immediate monster threats to explain. 

“Will he come after you? After us?”

Dean shook his head. “No. He just wanted his car back. And…” he paused, replaying the conversation in his head. “He won’t come after me. I should probably go, anyway.”

She laughed. “You’d be easier to pick off the side of the street, gringo. Wait a week. We’ll be caravaning north. Stay with us, it is easier to hide in a crowd.”

“You don’t mean that,” Dean said, turning to face her. No one put themselves in danger for strangers. No one sane. And never for him.

“You’re a good worker. Helped my brother. Kept my father from being sick.” Her eyes sparkled with humour as she said it, and Dean knew that she knew he was behind the miracle reprieve. Or she suspected as much and was baiting him for a confirmation. The warm hazy fog of endorphins and of an evening well spent soured in Dean’s gut. He resented the implied superiority and the charity posturing. The offer made sense, but he wondered why the fuck people were trying to teach him how to survive outside of nine to five society. 

Thunder rumbled above them, dry summer lightning striking somewhere in the fields. “That’s strange,” said Ximena, startled as she squinted at the sky, “the weather report didn’t have anything about electrical storms.”


	6. Mark of Cain

A week later, true to word, they left. It was a hurried departure, closer to organized chaos, in the hours leading to midnight. There hadn’t been much to pack in the trailer, but still both trucks were full with bags of clothes and sheets and dinged cooking pots. Dean felt he didn’t have much, but somehow his duffel felt heavy by the time he was done, the cold metal of his limited arsenal well padded. All the other families were packing as well, streaming off into the night in groups of cars. Some were going south, some were headed west and inland. Most were heading north, with promises to regroup at the next camp, or the next year. As their tail lights vanished, Dean shivered. The camp was empty now, abandoned and left for entropy to claim. He was glad when they turned out of the country lane and onto the highway. 

Marco and Felipe had piled into the back of Rodrigo’s truck with their mother and most of the luggage. They had been grouchy and miserable in the packing, a contrast with their restored level of energy since the intoxication had run its course. It took a quietly spoken conversation with Ximena to understand that — where they were going — school would start up again. Dean could empathize with not wanting to go back to school, uprooted at the drop of a hat and made stake out a new territory. Juan drove with Ximena sitting shotgun — unopposed — leaving Dean in the back seat with a large plastic bag of clothes for company. The kid was refusing to put on the radio, hunched into a nervous mess and eyes flicking to all the mirrors in rapid rotation.

“Who do you think is on our tail?” asked Dean, after a dozen miles. The silence was killing him. He craned around and scanned the road behind them but nothing was out of place, no strange cars, no sign that they were being followed.

“Cops,” Ximena answered. “Or ICE agents. Same thing. We leave at night because there’s less patrols on the highway.” 

“Ah,” He leaned forward and hit Juan on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “Sit straight. Relax your shoulders, stop looking at the mirrors and stay close to the speed limit.” 

“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” he said, glancing back in the rearview mirror. To his credit, he also fixed his posture and looked slightly less like he was driving a stolen car.

“A few times.” Dean could feel Ximena’s glare through the mirror. He raised his hands in fake surrender. “I did say I could split. You’re the one who insisted on having me around.” 

“Any other tips on how to evade the law?” she asked.

“Yeah. Let me drive when we stop for gas.” 

They drove north along the foot of the mountains, the rise and dips of them blocking the western parts of the world in ways that fitted Dean just fine. Mostly up the highway, though once or twice slipping unto service roads through sleeping towns, following some unmarked signals. Cops hideouts, most likely. Or had been at some point. Dean had watched a documentary once about the migration of butterflies, and how they still split and detoured around a mountain that had eroded away thousands of years ago. The blood remembered. 

They stopped for gas when the highway took a sharp left and dove for a break in the mountain range. A sun-faded billboard promised some natural wonders in the nearby national park, but all the red ink had faded a solid decade ago, painting the landscape in browns and blues like some alien pulp paperback. The gas station was barren, a little out of touch with modern days, cash only and didn’t have any security cameras. The cashier had a sawed-off 12 gauge shotgun within reach and in plain sight beside him. Dean liked him. 

Juan crawled into the backseat and pummeled the clothes into a pillow, making himself comfortable in the boneless ways of youth. Dean chuckled and drove them out slowly, leaving some distance between him and Rodrigo but making sure not to lose sight of the other tail lights. He fiddled with the radio, finding some soothing classic rock to fill the silence.

“You’ll have to tell me about how you know to evade cops,” said Ximena after a while. The sky was lighter in the east now, either from the coming dawn or the light pollution rising like a spectre from Washington. The digital clock was broken in the truck, but it was so low in the list of things to fix it might be inexistent. “Or why the man at the garage scared you so much.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I really don’t.” He rolled down the window, letting the air slip through his fingers. 

“You have to come from somewhere.” She settled against the door, turning to look at him, her hair a darker mass against the window.

“Yep”

“And you’re not going to tell me anything about it?”

“Nope.”

“Alright,” she said at length. And it was. There was no sulking, no subtle jab that followed it. Dean drummed along to the song on the edge of the window, as the miles vanished beneath them. 

“So where are we going?” asked Dean, noting the passing city names as they flashed in the headlights.

“Adam’s county, Pennsylvania. Apple picking, school for the boys. The usual.” 

Tracing routes mentally was second nature, roughly mapping locations, and travel. Dean frowned. “Why stick to the highway? We could have avoided crisscrossing the hills by going on side roads back at the station.”

“Safer.”

“More highway patrols.”

“Less small town hunting parties. “ She fiddled with the radio until she found one with less static. The music was unfamiliar to Dean, but it didn’t matter. “The people in the towns know the seasons. They don’t want to do the jobs, they think it’s beneath them, too dirty. But they don’t want us to have them, either. The farmers are glad for us. The towns around the farms, a lot less.”

“But they take your money, I bet.”

“Yes. Some of them serve my family like they would serve lepers, but they will take the money.”

“They’re idiots.”

“Yes.”

“So, school for the boys… not for you?”

“Finished with high school. School is expensive, not worth spending that money on a girl.” There was bitterness there. “I don’t need their papers to prove I’m smart.”

“Amen to that.”

That earned him a laugh. “I didn’t take you for a spiritual man.” 

“Oh? How come?”

“You’re always missing when we leave for church so Mama doesn’t get a chance to nag you into coming.”

“Yeah, Well. Me and God don’t see eye to eye on some things. Most things. Doesn’t mean I don’t give thought to what’s out there and what comes after.” Dean didn’t add out loud that he didn’t have to guess about either side of that particular coin. Been there, done that. Got the stamps in his non-existent passport and all that jazz.

“Amazing.”

“Careful, don’t cut yourself on that edge.” 

“You’ll want the next exit.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Off the highway street lights started to appear and Dean had to actually pay attention to where the other truck was going. Rodrigo drove into the sprawling suburb. When he stopped it was in the parking lot of an apartment complex, three high rise building with matching beige and orange siding. They had the matchy-matchy look of constructions planned in nice offices as far removed from the reality of the completed space as humanly possible. The bastards had probably celebrated and thumped each other on the backs for their good work. 

“We’re staying here?” Dean asked as he got out of the truck, leaning on the door. He wasn’t certain if he wanted to step out, or get back in and find a better fleabag motel. 

“In that one,” said Maria Isabella, crossing across the parking to join them. She pointed to the building on the left. “Rodrigo is getting the keys. There is only two, we will make copies.” 

The apartment was closed in, a series of small rooms with nicotine stained walls. Small kitchen, small bathroom, two small bedrooms, and plenty of weirdly wasted space in hallways. There was a lingering oily smell, that only dissipated partway when Maria Isabella threw open the windows. Dean had been in worse, though usually not long term. He swallowed down the disgust and wiped his hand on his jeans. He could always stock up on long sleeved shirts. 

The twins barged past him, carrying mattress coverings and Dean shook himself out of his state of mind enough to help them. He had to agree with them, he didn’t want to sleep on the beds without the heavy-duty plastic covering making them airtight. 

“Tiny couch,” said Dean, once they were done. “Two double beds.” 

“We’ve got an air mattress,” said Juan, dismissively. “It’ll do.”

“I’ll fight you for it,” answered Dean. Air mattress sounded like the best idea of the day. 

They settled down easily enough after that, and it took until dinner the following week for things to come crumbling down. Dean had almost lulled himself into thinking he was in the clear.

Almost. 

“Have you see any coyotes?” Ximena asked, to no one in particular. 

Dean shook his head. “They won’t come around people in daylight unless they are sick or hurt, why?” 

“How do you know that? You some kind of wildlife inspector?” asked Juan, giving Dean a side glance. Dean shrugged. He wasn’t looking toward opening that particular can of worms. He was shorter tempered these days, irritable and snappish. Apple picking, as it turned out, was easier on the back, but it murdered his shoulders. That it included ladders and heights didn’t help either. Dean wasn’t so sure he liked it. 

“The manager was in a bad mood,” said Ximena, ignoring her brother. “He gets his meat from a local rancher and apparently half the herd was injured by animal attacks. He was thinking coyotes.” Ximena had found work as a hostess in some steakhouse, on condition of heels and a dress maybe three inches too short. At least it was a nice, expensive one and people kept their hands to themselves, mostly. The speed at which the hiring process had gone made Dean think this was a recurring thing, which raised all sorts of questions about labor law. He didn’t ask them out loud. It was better money than the bar had been, and she brought home desserts that would have been discarded. One did not simply punch the reason for pie in the face.

“Coyotes are too small to take a cow!” Marco exclaimed with self-satisfied righteousness. “Cows are over one thousand pounds!”

“Maybe it was a mountain lion!” Felipe joined in, as excited. “Or a bear!” 

Dean smiled and tuned them out, as the kid happily went over their list of predators and what they had read for book reports in the past. Predators, freak lightning storms, cattle mutilation. Shit. 

Several cars had sped past them, two days earlier, up the winding road and past the orchard. The lead car with lights on, clearing a path as though he’d expected traffic in the middle of nowhere. None of them slowed, but Dean had moved around the trees, making sure he was hidden from the road. Some of the other workers noticed, but they just shifted as well, staggering their pattern. He hadn’t thought much of it, focused on the pulling and twisting and not breaking too many branches because those got docked out of his pay. He liked the crew boss, but he was strict in a way that wasn’t fun to mess with. The other workers barely gave him a once over. Apparently, word had spread up from North Carolina and for better or worse he was accepted as the strange cuckoo child of the Delgado family. It made for a better cover, even if it made things slightly boring. At least now Dean had a good idea what had summoned the suits and the cops 

“You’re not hungry tonight?” Maria Isabella’s question made him look up. He’d been idly stirring his spoon around his bowl. The stewed chicken and tomatoes glistened in the overhead lamp, bright red and chunky. Truth be told Dean hadn’t been a fan: it tasted subdued, a bit bland. Even the bread tasted a bit like mushy sawdust.

“Not, really. Must be tired,” he answered instead. She made a sound midway between huffing and humming but didn’t press the question further. 

Dean stayed up as everyone else went to sleep, under the pretense of reading a book with a flashlight. He remembered to turn the pages once in a while but none of the words registered. Not that he was actually in the mood for late-night reading of a bodice-ripper romance with the essence of mullets and killer abs as the cover. When he moved to get a glass of water he made sure to step gently over the creaking part of the floor, so that no one would notice anything out of the ordinary. And if the salt box disappeared from the shelf, no one would be the wiser. Salt was cheap. The buildings had been built cheap, but had winding metal staircases outside each apartment as fire escape routes, accessible through not-quite-large-enough guillotine windows. Juan stirred when the misadjusted window groaned behind Dean leaving, rubbing at his eyes. Dean winked at him through the glass and put a finger to his lips as he closed the window fully. He drew a line of salt on the outside for good measure and discarded the empty box. It missed the dumpster in the alley and bounced as Dean made his way down.

The night air was crisp, with just the early signs of fall tinting it. Cold nails raking up and down skin but no bite, not yet. Dean closed his jacket against the wind, his fingers lingering on the shape of the blade in his pocket. He had grabbed an angel blade from the armoury on his way out of Kansas. But he liked the Kurd blade, from the worn smooth bone handle to the aggressive curves and serration. It was more his style. Angel blades were too clean and surgical.

Tracking the demon was disappointingly easy. The ones that managed to slip top-side, slithering through the holes in Hell’s borders were weak, small enough to avoid setting alarms in their movements. Some were cunning as well, sharpened by the politics and by the rack. This demon was dumb as a rock.

Hiding in a boarded-up bar had been a nice move. It was in a loud neighborhood, rough around the edges, where no one would have heard the screams. Layers of flyers and advertising covered the windows, letting little light in and even less out. Dean didn’t know what the end-game had been, but it wasn’t a bad base of operation. A little redecorating and a good scrubbing to remove the bloodstains would be required to make it a viable business again if that even had been the demon’s goal. 

Who even knew what goals the escaped rank and file had.

Not that it mattered anymore. Dean stepped over the slumped corpse of the would-have-been bodyguard to get a better look at the barback. The thing’s loyalty had been admirable, if misguided. Dean wasn’t quite sure what it was, maybe a wraith of a Jefferson Starship rejected prototype. It has died messy with a blade twisting in it’s guts as it has tried to protect the demon it served. Her cries and phlegmatic breaths bounced now on the bare walls and around the empty room. 

Dean grabbed a grimy bottle of vodka and pulled out the stopper with some effort, breaking the sticky crusty residue. A little Latin and a quick dip of the rosary he’d lifted from Maria Isabella’s bedside table: making holy water was a question of protocol, not ordinance. He made his way back to the center of the room. The devil’s trap wasn’t the prettiest he’d even drawn but it would hold, and he didn’t need it for long anyway. He stopped at the edge of the trap and flicked the contents of the blessed bottle of cheap-ass vodka unto the demon. She screamed and thrashed, but he had her tied up into a nicely compact package, elbows tied together with her wrists tied to her ankles, spine arching backward. He waited until the steam evaporated.

“Please,” she said, “Please let me go. I’ll help you. Whatever you want, I’ll do it—”

“Now, you have things wrong here, sweetheart,” he interrupted, sloshing the remains of the vodka in the bottle, which made her flinch. “There’s nothing you can do topside that I want. We can do this easy or we can do this hard, but the end is going to be the same.”

“No… No I can’t go back. I can’t. I shouldn’t be here, please don’t.”

“Shhhh. Shhh… I need you to carry a message. Can you do that for me?” Dean crouched down so she could see him better from the angle on the floor. He kept his voice low and even like he was soothing a dog or a child. “Just a message.” He waited until she nodded, tears streaming down her face, her eyes wide with fear. In her thrashing, she had dislocated a shoulder and it jutted at an angle that Dean knew had to be excruciating. “Tell Crowley that Dean Winchester said to keep a better leash on his pets.” She tried to speak, maybe to beg some more, but he had nothing left to say to her. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…” The words rolled out of him from rote memorisation. They tingled and plucked at him, not unlike breaking the Devil’s trap had felt but weaker, like drops of rain instead of hitting a wall. The anti-possession tattoo on his chest itched and burned as if it was freshly inked and scarring all over again. She screamed as he recited the Latin, but that was to be expected. 

When it was over and the smoke had burned and dissipated back to hell, he scuffed the devil’s trap with his knife and checked her pulse. He found none and her skin was cooling rapidly, the vivid green of her eyes going cloudy as he watched. The meat suit had died a long time ago and the decay was reclaiming her fast, now that Hell no longer pulled the strings. He splashed the rest of the vodka over her, then went back to the bar. A bottle went over the slumped corpse of the bodyguard and a third he poured behind him as he climbed up the steps. He threw a book of matches at the trail and watched as the flames happily danced back down. Dean shook his head. It was all such a waste. 


	7. Creeping Darkness

Workers had been in the fields for several hours by the time the suits came to ask questions. Dean emptied his bag carefully — bruised apples were also docked from his pay — as he watched them fan out. The officers looked bored and a few had condescending snarls on their faces like they were being asked to go dumpster diving. The wildlife suits were more gentle, trying to cross the language barrier with baby talk and big hand movements. One of them tried to mimic what Dean was fairly certain was meant to be a coyote. None of them asked about a fire. 

A yelp made Dean turn on instinct, eyes narrowing. His hand landed on the side of his chest where the warm weight of Ruby’s knife was a stiff comfort under his clothes. One of the local cops had cornered a woman between a ladder and the branches of a tree they’d already picked clean. Gabriela was looking at everyone but the cop, her eyes wide and showing just a bit too much white. Dean rolled his eyes and walked towards them, taking in the not-quite-textbook grip the guy had on Gabriela’s hip. She had nice hips, the kind Dean could easily picture bent over furniture with the brightly printed dresses she favoured rucked up to her waist. The leggings would have to go, however, no matter how practical they were. Maybe a garter belt and those stockings with the fancy black line at the back. 

“She hasn’t seen any coyotes either,” he said out loud when he got within a few feet of them. 

The man jumped back as if he’d been burned. Dean levelled a glare at him, keeping Gabriela in his field of vision in case she did something stupid. Like run, or try to slap the guy. Officer Wandering Hands straightened his uniform as he turned to Dean. “Finally! Someone who speaks the language! You must be the crew leader or the boss or something?”

“Just a worker,“ said Dean. 

“ _Really_? What, your momma dropped you on the head as a kid so you couldn’t find anything better work wise?” 

“I just like the great outdoors. Any other questions, Officer Wade?” 

“Miller. Officer Miller,” the cop corrected him almost absentmindedly. 

“My mistake, I’m sure.” Dean smiled and turned his body to encourage the other man to leave.

“No, no question. The coyote theory doesn’t make sense if you ask me.” He shook his head and dropped his tone as he passed Dean. “Probably one of _those_ people’s kids making trouble. Man, the cows were mauled, you know? Really sick puppies.” 

“I’ll call in if I hear anything about it.”

“Good man,” said the cop, patting Dean on the shoulder and finally walking away. Dean watched him until he was almost out of the apple trees row and turned to Gabriela.

“What a _gilipollas_ ,” he said. She blinked at him and then burst out laughing, so hard she had to steady herself on the ladder, bending forward. Dean smirked. Yeah, that was a heck of a view. 

The dress did look good rucked up — and pooled on the floor for that matter. Within two weeks, Dean had a key to her apartment, a floor down and on the other side of the building from the Delgado’s. He didn’t know how Gabriela’s kids knew when he was coming over or where they went, but he didn’t ask. The oldest took care of the babies and made themselves scarce. He didn’t ask who the fathers were. Maria Isabella hadn’t liked the new development, though Ximena and Juan found it hilarious and teased Dean about whenever they had a chance. Rodrigo had asked him, once, what his intentions were. Dean had mentioned condoms and the conversation had stopped there. 

They didn’t need to know that he wasn’t over there _every_ night he didn’t sleep on the air mattress. 

Summer burnt out in heavy humidity, heat, and storms. The rain came over them in waves, clouds washing over the blue of the sky and killing the light. Then the system would dissolve and in the sudden too bright light the colours would be blinding. Green leaves, muddy brown soil, the blood red of apples. It made Dean’s eyes hurt, like the world after the rain had its definition cranked too high, washed clean and pristine. He hated it. Almost as much as he hated the weatherman in front of his green screen talking about unstable storm cells and global warming. Almost as much as he hated the mostly constant stream of cops in the orchard, keeping watch parked in their dry car on the road and following them when they were heading home at the end of the day. Setting up camp in the parking lot, pretending to be checking for speed on the dead road that lead to the apartment complex. They were crap at stake-outs, or bored, or both. They didn’t seem to notice Dean as he stalked the perimeter, down the fire-escape or up on the roof when the night was dry enough. The building, sadly, was bereft of gargoyles. It was an insult to his on-point Batman impersonation. 

He spotted a few hunters sniffing at the edge of town life like burly bloodhounds. No one he knew — an old hand, solitary and hard, and two greenhorns who still wore their losses on their sleeves. If they had been pirates, they would have held cutlasses in their teeth to show their bloodlust. They left, after a time, without finding anything, muttering about crazy weather. Dean made sure to stay downwind from them, out of sight, out of the bars they marked as theirs. Infuriatingly he had to agree with their conclusion. If there was a demon left in the area, it had gone to ground and hidden its tracks well. So maybe there was something to all this humdrum about carbon footprints. 

The storms cleared as the leaves changed. Dean could have done without the aggressively happy Bob Ross aesthetic. 

“Mike, can I have a word?” Officer Miller pushed himself off his squad car before Dean could stifle an automatic groan. Miller’s uniform shirt was creased and stained, smears about a finger wide and spreading. Napkins. Maybe Dean could gift wrap him napkins as a bribe to get him to just _go_. “I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to put a move on your girl.”

Dean blinked at him and raised a shoulder dismissively. “She’s not my girl, though the benefits are nice. And those I didn’t have when you were feeling her up.” 

“Yeah, well, the point still stands.” He looked over Dean’s shoulder, at the crew setting up ladders where they had left off. One half of the orchard picked bare, the other with their branches weighted down and bowing. Dean thought it might have been an apology or an attempt at one. 

“Was there anything else?”

“Yeah. Wanted to give you a heads up. School starts in a week. Mean’s the social workers — CPS and all those — will be making the rounds. You’re a good guy, wanted to give you a head up.” He gestured past Dean with an all-encompassing wave. “The rest of this lot knows the drill, but I figured you’d want to know. Only takes one crazy lying bitch to ruin a man’s life, you know?”

An image of Ruby came to Dean’s mind, as he had last seen her: arms held back and soul sparking behind her skull as he drove her blade into her heart. He smiled. “Oh yeah, I know. Thanks for telling me.”

“No problem. Didn’t want to hear about you getting thrown under the bus as bait. I hope you get back on your feet soon!” He patted Dean on the shoulder and went back to the car with the proud airs of someone putting a checker mark on his ‘good deeds’ list. Dean whistled and patted his empty pocket. Hopefully, it would take Miller some time to find the hex-bag.

That evening Dean didn’t go up to the apartment to wash up when they returned from the orchard. He walked around the building instead to find the strip of drying grass and dirt the kids had claimed as a play yard. Threadbare tires had been repurposed into a kind of jumping game and spray painted milk jugs acted as goal posts for the ball games that only loosely resembled what Dean knew of soccer. Then again, it might have been the real deal.

“Camilia, can I speak to you for a sec?”

Camilia’s eyes were flint-hard and cold as she assessed Dean from head to toe. He was used to eyes like that, had seen them in himself, in other hunters, in some of the survivors as he left town. She nodded once, sharp, and walked away from the playground, shifting the baby she held on her hip as she did. The baby was chewing on what looked to be an original “My Little Pony” toy, which would have been worth a pretty penny had it not been covered in drool, snot, and gouged out teething marks. 

“Make it quick,” she said.

“Yeah. So, I’ve been told there’s going to be uniforms swarming in soon, and I figured it’d be better if me and your mother’s—”

“You don’t exist.” She cut him off. Dean stuttered to a stop then cocked his head, prompting her to continue. “I’m not stupid, Michael. The second I tell anyone of them that mom has a boyfriend, a much older white dude nonetheless, they’ll start asking me where you touched me. And they’ll want to do assessments and get me drawing pictures and I don’t have the time for this shit. So you don’t exist.”

“It’s happened in the past?” 

“What? The bad touch boyfriend or the creepy official with a camera checking for bruises?”

“Both?” Dean phrased it as a question, but it wasn’t. He knew the answer would be yes. He wasn’t surprised she didn’t answer at all.

“Besides, Ximena is the one you should be worried about. You’re living in her apartment and all. Maria Isabella’s vouching for you will only go so far. Rodrigo’s word might help. But they’ll be crawling all over you anyway.”

“You don’t sound worried about any of those potential accusations.”

She smiled, cold as her eyes and dropped her free hand to pat the pocket of jeans. Dean could guess the outline of a folding knife there, obscured by the fabric and the bright coloured second-hand shirt she wore over it. 

“Ximena wouldn’t tell _them_. She’d tell _me_ and you’d wake up choking on your own balls.” 

“¿Has visto que grande es?,” Ximena said in a sing-song as she walked towards them. “Necesitare ayuda para inmobilizarlo.” She held out her arms and the baby dropped the toy in favour of the much more appealing new person. “It’d be a shame for the drugs to do all the work.” 

The two girls switched to rapid Spanish and walked back towards the playground, gathering the younger kids and directing them back inside. Dean looked at the discarded toy on the asphalt. The pony had once been blue — or maybe green — and its eyes had been scribbled over with a black marker.

“What you looking at?” he asked, shaking his head. The toy didn’t answer.

The social workers descended upon them the following Sunday like corduroy-wearing locusts, wielding clip-pads. It was a well-rehearsed door-to-door operation, somewhere between political canvassing and affordable sedan driven military take-over. When the knock came to their door, Dean was expecting it. What he had not expected was the twins' reaction. They ran out of their rooms, stepping over each other to be the first to open the door. It took a few moments for Dean to understand that the repeated screeching was someone’s name. 

Marco wrestled the door open, allowing Felipe to slip through the opening with a triumphant laugh. Neither of them sounded distressed, so Dean didn’t bother to move from his spot in the kitchen. He grabbed a soaked corn husk and smeared the lard and masa dough unto it, passing it to his left for Ximena to add the meat and roll it up. Maria Isabella completed the chain and tied the parcels up with strips of corn husk with flickers of her fingers Dean had trouble following. When they were closer to being done he would ask her to do it slowly. She was still mostly bewildered by the fact that he offered to cook, willingly and on a regular basis. That he actually wanted to learn was outside the scope of her expectations. Dean could tell she wasn’t comfortable with the situation, but he didn’t care. He loved the process of making food and didn’t feel like it lessened his man-card. Anyone who disagreed was free to bring it up with him to his face.

“Hey, easy, easy kiddo. Let him in first.” The man’s voice as smooth and amused. 

“Did you bring the cards?” asked Marco, opening the door wider. 

“Did you bring a rabbit?” asked Felipe, with awe and wonder in his voice. He was leading a man by the hand, as tall as Dean but thin and awkward when he moved. The dark red of his polka dot tie contrasted with the happily coloured sky blue shirt under a darker blue vest. The man’s hair was a mop of light brown hair, curling wildly and shoved behind his ear on one side. A black satin magician’s top hat sat on top of it all, giving the impression of a college kid both dressing up to an interview and having lost a bet to a drunk frat boy. 

“I’m allergic to rabbits,” said the man, allowing Felipe to drag him into the apartment by his sleeve. Marco had enthusiastically settled for a hug around his waist, though he had to take three steps for every one the man took. “Did you know that no one is actually sure when the rabbit in the hat trick was invented? Some people think it was the “King of Conjurer”, Louis Comte in 1814.” 

“I bet he wasn’t even a king,” said Marco. “And card tricks are better because we can travel with them and they don’t bite.” 

“They are,” the second man walked through the door, smiling broadly. “Why don’t you two show Dr. Reid your room, and he can show you a new trick?” 

“I tried to practice the coin trick,” said Felipe, his voice a whisper while he looked down at the floor in a display of shame, “but I forgot. Can you show me again?”

“Of course!” They walked into the bedroom, allowing Dean to get a good look at the second social worker. Where the first man had been all long lines and joints, the second owned his body, completely at ease in his skin and just short of cocky. He moved with the confidence of combat training, with the dirty sharp edges of street fighting underneath. When he smiled, a perfect miracle-of-dentistry white smile, it was warm and natural, almost magnetic.

Dean tensed, shifting his weight as he reached for the next husk. Something low in his gut twisted, conflicted. He wanted that man out of the apartment. It was Dean’s and he didn’t want to share. He also very much wanted to slide a hand under the soft henley he was wearing, to test just how much return on investment the man was getting from his gym membership. 

“Señor Morgan,” said Rodrigo, walking in from the master bedroom where he had been resting. He was still dressed in his good Church clothes, hair slicked back as neatly as he could. “It is good to see you again.”

“I am glad to see your family again this year, Señor Delgado. We weren’t sure you would be coming back.” 

“We go where there is work.” 

“Then, I am glad there was work available in the county.” He turned towards the kitchen, put a hand on his heart and bowed slightly. “Señoras,” he said, looking at Ximena and Maria Isabella. He turned towards Dean and gave him a long assessing look, his expression dropping to serious bordering on confrontational. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.” 

“This is Michael,” said Maria Isabella stepping forward as she dried her hands on her apron. “He is our…”

“Lodger,” said Dean. “The Delgados have been very kind in letting me share their apartment so I don’t have to pay rent just for me.”

“Is that so?”

Dean didn’t miss the quick eye flick to Ximena. He didn’t bother hiding his own eye roll in response. “Yep. That’s all there is to it.” He carefully folded the husk and reached to grab a strip for the bow tie. “How about you guys get started with the forms? I can finish up here.”

“Are you sure?” Ximena asked, but she was already washing her hands. Maria Isabella looked at them over her shoulder, a deep frown etching lines across her face.

“Yes. Despite what you ladies seem to think, I have been feeding myself fine for decades. Leaving me alone in a kitchen won’t make me spontaneously combust.” That got a flicker of a smile dancing on Morgan’s lips. Dean hid his own smirk by dropping his head and walking around the counter to claim Ximena’s place. Point one for him. 

By the time he had filled the steaming basket and set the timer, the living room was crowded. Getting the twins enrolled into the local elementary school had been but a formality. Juan was pouring over the class selection for the high school registration, visibly torn. Dean leaned his hip against the countertop, crossing his arms as he tried to figure out what the issue was. Morgan was going over classes and schedules with Ximena translating most of the description to Spanish for her parents. 

“We’re trying to find a schedule that will allow Juan to still work some hours,” said the tall and gangly social worker. Dean hadn’t noticed him sneaking up to him, and it made him anxious. “Of course, it won’t be as many hours once the school starts as we’re trying to maximize his chances for academic success. Studies show a direct correlation between working more than fifteen hours a week and declining grades.”

“Good thing I’m here, then. Extra income.”

“The benefits of which are likely offset by having another mouth to feed.” 

“I pull my weight.” Dean rolled his eyes. Engaging in the conversation had been a bad idea. He wanted to punch the nerd, quick and dirty so that he’d fall in a heap of lost breath. It would probably hurt his chances with the hot one if he did. 

“So I noticed.”

“Yeah, I bet you did.” Dean turned to face the other man. “I bet you’re _real good_ at noticing things.”

“I am,” said Reid. Either he hadn’t picked up on the sarcasm of Dean’s reply or he didn’t care. Both answers grated on Dean’s nerves, for some reason. “Observational reports are one of the most effective tools in my line of work. It would be counter-productive for me to be oblivious.”

“So what’s your report gonna say on me?” 

Reid ran a hand through his hair, messing it further. The top hat had been discarded, while Felipe tried to find its false bottom. “None of the children are afraid of you, which is a point in your favour. So far, I have no reason to fill in anything about endangerment. However, they have steadfastly refused to explain how you came to be invited to live with them. Juan has formed a sort of hero worship on you, and you’re probably the reason he’s trying to get shop class on his schedule.”

“Mechanics never run out of work,” answered Dean with a dismissive shrug. Then, he mentally kicked himself. Fucking idiot, he’d walked right into that trap. 

“That’s true. But it does make me wonder. Why work the fields in that case, Michael? Why pick the hardest option for the least amount of pay?” 

“I needed a change.” 

“Now, we all can tell that was a lie,” said Morgan, looking over his shoulder. “You might as well admit it.” 

“Screw this,” said Dean, pushing himself off the counter and across the apartment. Maria Isabella looked at him with a hurt confused head tilt, Rodrigo with some level of disappointment. He made it out and up to the roof, moving on auto-pilot, snarling at the empty space. A disappointed father figure, story of his life. 

The door slammed behind him, soft close system dead for at least a decade.

Dean turned around slowly, relishing the crunching sound of the layered patches of bitumen under his feet. The edge of his vision had turned a dull grey, tunnelling, fight-or-flight reflexes kicking in with the sweet siren song of adrenaline. Heavy emphasis on the fight. What kind of idiot would follow him when he was in a disemboweling mood?

“You’re angry,” said the tall skinny kid playing at being an adult. “It's reassuring that you walked away, but I’m sure you can understand why that’s concerning.”

“Please spare me. If you have something to say come out and say it.” Dean flexed his hand, trying to shake loose the cramping muscles. He wanted a blade — no, he craved _his_ blade. A fist was a poor substitute. 

“Fine. Let me be blunt with you. Are you a danger to these children or their parents?” The friendly, soothing tone was gone. The man was all business, clipped tone, and narrowed eyes. He was analyzing Dean, trying to fit him in the check-box lists of his world-view. 

“No.” He took a deep breath in, then blew it out slowly. The social worker was tall but scrawny. He could always wrestle him off the roof if that wasn’t a terribly bad idea. An alibi would be hard to come by, especially with all the witnesses. Still, the image held some comfort.

“Your anger is directed at me. Why is that?”

After a long silence, Dean said, “You weren’t there.”

“Excuse me?”

“You weren’t there. There was no well-meaning bureaucrat for me when I was seven and had a kid to raise. No one who cared about the belt welts and the broken ribs and the empty stomach or the rotten milk tooth.” He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see the judgment on his face.“You weren’t there.”

Reid didn’t answer right away. “The daughter. I have paperwork with me for scholarships. College application. She has a chance if she wants to take it.”

Dean laughed. Of all the things he might have expected, that hadn’t been on the list. 

“And you want me to give them to her, without her dad knowing because he’ll say no.”

“She has a chance to break out of the cycle.”

“Sure. What the hell. I’ll do it.”

The man nodded and went back inside, his steps loud on the metal threads. Dean waited until his breathing was under control before following, slotting his mask back into place. He could deal with these emotions on the far side of never.

“Did you hear the news?” asked Marco as he walked in, pointing at the TV running on mute in the background. Dean shook his head and the kid continued. “They found more dead animals. Sheep now. They say their eyes burnt out or got eaten. What predator eats eyes?”

“I don’t know, kid,” Dean said, lying as easily as he breathed. “Sounds dangerous.” That, at least, was the truth. 


	8. After Swarm

Monday morning greeted them with rain. It was a fine misting, not enough to shut down work, just enough that everything was wet and slippery. And chaffing. The slow constricting torture of moist denim — with rivlets of water running from the waistband down — was slowly driving Dean insane. 

The skin of his hands was pruny and wrinkled by the time they broke for lunch, the spitting of rain having stopped sometime previously without fanfare. The clouds still hung low, like dirty grey cotton balls, flattening the light. They ate standing up, and the thermos of soup did little to warm Dean up. He shifted his weight, just to hear the wet slurping of the mud beneath his boots. He hadn’t slept the previous night, running on some nervous energy that kept exhaustion at bay. He felt numb if anything. No sandy dry eyes, no overwhelming aches, no jitters from too much coffee. Just a numbness swelling inside him like a smoky void where anything that wasn’t anger should be. Perversely, despite everything, he would have said he was feeling good.

The clouds broke in the afternoon, unraveling and uneven. The exposed patches of sky let the light through but did nothing for warmth, the autumn sun being no match to the bone-deep chill. Dean almost missed the first scream, covered by the tumbling sounds of apples as he emptied his load into the truck. He would have ignored it entirely if it had not been followed by several other voices joining in. Fear, confusion, chaos, barked orders being repeated and ignored. 

Dean walked around the truck, curious and hoping for something entertaining. The screams quieted down as people ran past him, waving their arms wildly and uncoordinated. All but one, dressed in the thick white canvas apiarist suit, complete with the ribbed netted hat that made him look like a cross between a hazmat cleaner and an astronaut. The beekeeper was kneeling over an overturned wooden box, one side of it split open. He looked utterly inconsolable. 

As if seeing the broken hive had switched something in his brain, Dean could see them now. The chaotic flight of the swarming bees, expending in a loose vortex around them, bouncing on trees and against his clothes in angry confusion. The sound of them all around, the buzzing like a broken voice promising maddening truth if only you could hear it properly.

“Do you have a spare brood box?” The voice was low and gravely, lower than it had any right to be. Dean tensed, shoulders coming up to his ears, cursing himself for not grabbing an angel blade out of his bag yesterday. He could see it in his mind, the dull silver gleam at the bottom of his clothes, next to the shiny cardboard file of college application papers. 

“Uh yeah,” said the beekeeper, shaken from his lament. 

“Then I suggest you go get it if we are to have a chance at recapturing the swarm.” 

Dean turned around once the other man had gotten up and started jogging away, towards what he now saw was a scattering of hives just outside of the orchard. They would be done with the harvest here very soon. Not soon enough.

“Hello, Dean,” said Castiel. “We need to watch for where the queen will settle. There’s a short window where the workers will crowd around her. It’ll be our only chance to act.”

Castiel wasn’t looking at him, head craned up, scanning the trees, acting as normal as could be expected from an accountant in a bee storm. Dean flinched from a sting, flicking away the struggling worker in its death throes. 

“Let’s do this quick.” 

It was easy being there, in the middle of raging small death machines, waiting. Waiting for the man with the box to come back, huffing and running with an awkward gait. Waiting for the promised sweet spot to act. The one sting became five and ten, up and down Dean’s arms, in the crook of his elbow, on the side of his neck. The venom pumped under his skin, swelling into welts and fading just as fast, swallowed by something darker and more ancient. The barbs stood up against his skin, each a reminder in time with the beats of his heart. Alive. Alive. Alive. 

Not a single bee stung Cas. They landed on him gently, prodding at the coat as it it was a big off-colour flower, walking up to his fingers. Dean could swear the things wanted to be petted, wings fluttering in contentment. 

“So uh. Does any of you have a saw?” The beekeeper spoke between heaving breaths. “They’re settling on that branch.”

“I have a knife,” said Dean. “Depends how big the branch.” 

Castiel rolled his eyes. It was a full body movement and Dean wondered how he had never realized the ripples of it, how it lingered around him in aftershocks. “Help me up,” he said. 

Lifting Cas was the easy part. Dean had done it often enough for Sam, fingers linked and knees bent to protect his back. But being so close to the angel was challenging. He could feel the weight of the presence of him, huge, pressing all around him. It felt like the static of the devil’s trap, but without the intent, just waves of ozone and electricity washing over him, making his hair stand on end and his muscles lock as the nerves misfired. 

If Cas noticed he didn’t say anything. He stretched and reached the branch, snapping it off with a flick of his wrist, as if it was nothing but hard candy and spun sugar. He stepped down from Dean’s improvised ladder and crouched by the brood box. He shook the branch once, spilling its content into the box like fuzzy treacle or caramel spread.

“They will be fine,” Cas said to the beekeeper. “But the queen is ageing, you will want to keep an eye and make sure they have a replacement one within the month. There should be queen cells in the spilled hive. Make sure to retrieve those.” 

“Listen, thank you for the help. But… don’t tell me how to do my job.” 

Castiel tilted his head in confusion, and though Dean was standing behind him, he knew he was doing a squinting blink. “He’s just trying to help, man. Don’t take the advice if you don’t want it, but he tends to be right, a lot more than he gives himself credit for.” 

"Michael, do you know this man?" Rodrigo asked as he walked closer carefully, looking for remaining bees. He stopped several feet away.

Dean didn't answer right away, taking a good hard look at Cas. The angel looked tired, sickly even. Emotions were flashing on his face, too human, too alien on the once statuesque wave of celestial intent. Castiel looked like shit. "Yeah," he said at length. "You could even say I've known him biblically." 

Rodrigo spluttered, his expression a mix between embarrassment and sucking on a lemon. Dean laughed. “Don’t think too hard about it.”

“We need to talk,” said Cas. Either the implication had flown over his head, or he was choosing to ignore it. 

“Yeah, well, I need to find a pair of tweezers and pull out insect gut and daggers,” Dean answered. He turned towards Rodrigo to add, “Sorry about the tree. If the boss man gives you shit for it, take it out of my pay.” 

Rodrigo flicked looked at Dean and Castiel, with a deep-set frown. “Don’t make too much noise when you get back,” he said at last. Dean chuckled and shook his head. 

“Where’s your ride, Cas?”

The diner was out of the way and tiny, a tin can with wiring more than a permanent building. They sold greasy food and local cider, fresh and cloudy in old-fashioned glass bottles. There were picnic tables in the lot next to it, strewn across the freshly cut grass. The tables were likely older than the diner. Dean picked at the label of his bottle, shredding the paper and pushing the glue with his nail. 

“So what’s the plan here, Cas? Slap some cuffs on me, cram in the trunk of your pimp-mobile and hand me off to Sam like a hogtied sacrificial lamb?” 

“No.” 

When Castiel didn’t elaborate Dean sighed. He couldn’t bring himself to look the angel in the eye. As it was, the table wasn’t quite large enough, ideas of personal spaces going out the window. Cas was all he could feel, the electric burn of his true-form a steady, comforting, bone-deep hum. He knew Cas didn’t want to hurt him or he would have already, would have focused that grace and burnt Dean right out of his skull. Dean suddenly understood why cats laid down on hot cars in summer, even if it burnt their feet. Sometimes, the pain just felt good. Dean wanted to rub himself all over Cas’ holiness, see if he could tarnish him just a bit further. Once, the thought would have made him recoil. 

“Then what are we doing here?”

“How are you, Dean?”

“Fine. I’m great!”

“No, you’re not.” He raised a hand before Dean could cut him off. “I won’t make you come with me. You can lie to yourself Dean, just don’t lie to me.”

Dean picked at the food cooling on the plate between them. He had no appetite, so the burger — cheese, extra onions — had been abandoned. The fries were slowly forming a mass of starch and oil, drenched in a pool of bright, blood-red ketchup.

“Why are you here, Cas?”

“I miss you.” The answer came promptly and didn’t sound rehearsed. Or, at least, it sounded as spontaneous as anything Cas ever said. It was followed by a coughing fit, deep and wet. Dean waited until Cas regained his composure. It took longer than it should have.

“What are you going to tell Sam?”

“I don’t know. That you had left when I got here and the trail was cold. Or that it wasn’t you at all, it was some other demon who I smote and sent back to hell.”

“Think he’ll buy it?”

“I once lied and deceived both of you, and outplayed Crowley. I find it likely.”

Dean chuckled. That had been a disaster and mostly brought by his own blind faith and loyalty. “Not sure Sam’s going to fall for it again.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Covering for me, Cas? That’s rich, considering you’ve obviously been hunting me down.” 

The shrug probably could have moved mountains, though the table barely moved. It made Dean feel a bit unsettled, like half of him was elsewhere and on a rollercoaster ride, or walking to shore after a month at sea. “Do you remember why I rebelled?”

“You made it amply clear it was for me, Cas. While beating my ass, might I add.”

He hummed. “Yes. You, in particular. You, as in humanity, in general too. I chose to side with free will, Dean. It’d be… hypocritical of me to deny the same from you.” He stopped, coughing again. As he wheezed and gasped for air Dean realized his sense of presence was flickering, on and off, like a badly wired house.

“You’re barely hanging on, aren’t you? You’re dying.”

“I’m becoming human,” Castiel corrected him.

“You should try to fix that.”

“I chose this,” said Castiel. “I claimed free will for my own. I get to live with the consequences of my path. It’s better this way.”

“How is you rotting away in a meat suit better?”

“This way, I will not have to watch you murder the world.”

 

“Who was the gentleman caller?” Ximena asked before Dean could step into the building. She was sitting on the fire escape, so he had to crane his neck to look up to her. He couldn’t see her face from this angle.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” he answered, jumping and walking up to her. 

“That’s not what you told Father. He was quite upset, you know?”

Dean settled on the metal thread below her. It was cold, biting through the fabric of his jeans. “That was a joke, between Cas and me. Not to say I never took guys to my bed, but he isn’t one of them.” He paused. “Does that bother you?”

He heard her shake her head, then when she realized he wasn’t able to see her she answered. “No.” Her tone was low like it was a confession.

“But it bothers Rodrigo?” When she didn’t answer, Dean chuckled. “You want to know the story with Cas?”

“You’re actually willing to share it with me?”

“Stow the sass, princess. I offered, didn’t I?” Dean shifted, so he was sitting sideways on the stairs, able to see her from the corner of his eye. It was cramped, but he could lean his head back against the railing. “Cas’ full name is Castiel, like the angel. I… I was in a bad place — and no I’m not going to tell you that story. Cas saved me. ” 

Ximena chuckled. “He’s the angel that used to watch over you.”

“You caught that?”

She nodded and ducked her head. Eavesdropping was something she’d been told was bad. “Is he coming back?” 

“No. He’s not. He came… In his own way, he came to say goodbye.”

“And save the bees.”

“Yes. And save the bees.” She laughed. He waited for her to be done. Ximena didn’t laugh enough, and mirth was good at getting people’s defences down. “Am I allowed back in the house?” 

“I’m not the one stopping you. Just the warning.”

“Yeah, I figured.” 

Dean took his time, going back down the fire escape and through the front door. He worried as his keyring as he walked, spreading the metal with his thumbnail and working the apartment’s key free. It never hurt to be prepared. 

The atmosphere inside the apartment was glacial. If they had been any further north he would have made a joke about how winter came for them. How winter would come for all of them, like death, or taxes, or ICE agents. That last one might be cutting too close to the bone, hit too raw of a nerve. He kept it at the back of his mind, like palming a grenade with the ring threaded around his finger. Maria Isabelle was washing dishes, scrubbing hard and fast and refusing to look at him. Dean knew, with the instinct of most childhood abuse survivors, that she was washing that dish _at_ him. Juan and the twins were nowhere to be seen. 

Rodrigo sat in the living room. The air mattress had been deflated and stored away, leaving the usually crowded space open and barren. The emptiness was being filled by posturing and dominant righteous anger. Dean smirked. Rodrigo Delgado, at his most intimidating and angry, barely rated at “one beer and a mediocre hunt” on the John-Winchester-scale-of-bad-times. 

“Hi,” said Dean. It wasn’t the strongest of openings, but it was neutral. Let the other person show the direction of their anger, so he could adjust his footing around it. 

“Sit.” There was no give in the tone, only the reverberating threads of deep-seated anger. Still, it was better than an outright expulsion. Dean sat on the couch, but he didn’t slouch back, keeping his weight forward.

“So this is where you read me the riot act?”

“You do not get to turn this into a joke. You brought sin crouching at my door and exposed my family to the stain of it. You should be ashamed.” 

“Yeah, well. I don’t do shame well. Tried, for the longest time, too.” He paused. “So what you wanna do about the skeletons in my closet? If you want me gone, say the word and I’m gone.” Rodrigo tightened his lips, no doubt biting them as he did. Dean knew he had the upper hand, that the fight wasn’t really a fight at all. It was negotiating the terms of rendition. “But you can’t, can you? You just got the sign-off on the bureaucrats. If I up and leave you have to have this conversation with them. And it won’t go down as smooth.”

“No. It would invite too many questions.”

“Alright, let’s say I stay, and this is still up in the air.” Dean relaxed against the couch, shifting so none of the springs or lumpy bits were poking him. “What’s going to change?”

“I don’t want you alone near any of the children,” he said. He was speaking slowly as if examining each word before saying it. It was, overall, the most Dean had heard Rodrigo speak in the months he had lived with his family. To him, or to anyone else. “I will not stand of the contagion to reach them. This conversation will stay between us. We have vouched for you. If others learn of this, they might take matters into their own hands and not everyone is as calm as me.” 

“I’m off babysitting duties, I don’t open that door around others, what else?” 

“When we leave for Florida, you need to have your own car.”

“We? Oh, I see, you already have me lined up as a worker and can’t back out of that either. Don’t worry. I can get my own ride.” 

“I will look into apartments. When we get there.” 

Maria Isabella put away the long dry pan. It was as good as a ringside bell. 


	9. Black Eyed

The apples ran out, and then the pears — though that harvest was small and worm bitten. Every discarded bushel of rotten fruit was a click of a coiling chain. It was time to move on. There was no signal, no mass text or calling tree activation. Or if there was, it was one Dean couldn’t see, a dog whistle out of his range. Everyone else seemed to get it, bursting into sudden activity, packing cars or trucks and making their way into the night. The buildings emptied faster than they had filled, draining into a stream of tail-light red.

The little grey car slotted nicely into the caravan. Dean followed Juan with a more casual distance than the rest were using, tailing each others like ants on a trail. The tight formation was blowing away the benefits of the unscheduled night-time transit, but he didn’t feel like arguing the point. The radio in the car was bad — filled with crackles and pops, the bass distorted by a blown speaker — so Dean turned it off in annoyance. The car itself was in rough shape, which was what had made it perfect for his use. That and the fact that the keys had been easy to find on the hook by the door. The greige fabric seats would need a good cleaning: they carried the memories of decaying meat, blood and the specific acrid note of burning human flesh. On the other hand, the rugaru who has previously owned it wouldn’t be filing any police reports, and Dean would be out of state before the cops started looking for a car. 

Truth be told, he didn’t mind the smoke and the blood, but it would, eventually, attract attention. That part was bad, or at least the law enforcement fallouts would be annoying to deal with. He didn't want to live through a re-run of the clusterfuck that had been brought by officer McAssgrab and the dead sheep.

That part bothered Dean. He turned it over in his mind, like a Rubik’s cube with mismatched stickers. It didn't make sense. He had dealt with the only demon trading in town, kept tabs with the other hunters and stalked around their case. There was nothing in those farmlands, least of all anything capable of such damage. The road ran beneath the car in coarse country grain and he was no closer to an epiphany. It was madly infuriating.

He almost missed the sudden pile-up, caught in his head. Some level of instinct made him look up, as the cars ahead came to a halt in a wave, in the haphazard manner of those having lost all steering control. Dean eased to a stop. He didn’t know what state they were in, had lost track somewhere around the last gas station stop. They were heading south, chasing after the warmth of summer. There was no light on either side of the road, just rows of corn, desiccated leaves rustling against each other, waiting for the hungry blades. The stars and moon were hidden, but there was another light behind the veil of cloud, moving and dancing. Like the northern lights, where no aurora had a right to paint the sky. 

There was a man standing in the road. He walked along the yellow line like an acrobat walks on his wire, slow and certain. The cars parted around him, none even came close to harming him. Light pulsed beneath his skin, sickly and conflicted, thorn. Fallen. 

A few people stayed in their cars, but most were stepping out in curious confusion, flocking together to stand in front of the man. A nervous whisper ran through them, but the man raised a hand and they fell silent. Dean cursed at the years of muscle memory that had locked his bag in the trunk of the car. 

The man was talking, the words rolling out of him like the scent of frankincense and myrrh. What was being spoken meant nothing, like the cooing gibberish of babies or of arcade game characters. Dean suspected that the words had never been in English and that the migrants heard them in Spanish. Dean ignored him. He knew the promises would be silken and sweet, filled with delights and visions of Paradise. Dean bit his cheek until he tasted the warm sulphur and iron of his own blood. On his arm the Mark stirred and flared, sending fire along his veins. It felt like adrenaline, like the pure savage nature of purgatory, like deeply satiating sex. 

The people closest to the man were crying, some with tears and some with blood. Their faces were masks of ecstasy, of joy and confirmed faith. Maria Isabella was clutching her rosary, fingers moving on the beads as she laughed, tears streaming down her face. Not everyone had gathered. The youngest children, the infants and some of the teenagers, were fast asleep in the cars, prenaturally still. A few of the adults too, breathing deeply, limp and caught into the dreamless sleep of angelic touch, The adults were for the most part on the ground, fallen as they came to investigate. Sorting and selecting, it was a clever trick. Worryingly clever — it showed practice. 

Dean pushed through the crowd, jostling as many as he could on his way. They swayed but would not wake from the trance. He almost made it to the front before the angel extended out his hand in a plea.

Luis stepped up before anyone else could move. He was a bear of a man, over six feet tall and built like a brick house, with hands that could squeeze blood from a stone. Dean had helped him try to repair some of the issues in the apartment complex since Luis was the unofficial handyman. He was a good man, selfless in ways that only got grating when you were on the receiving end of it, the kind who would go out of his way to give you the shirt off his back. 

“No. Don’t!” bellowed Dean, but if Luis heard him he didn’t stop, grabbing the offered hand. The sky above them broke, as some of the light that had been dancing behind the clouds descended upon them. It screeched and hissed like a feedback loop, vaster than what it manifested as, deeper. A multidimensional wave of celestial intent Cas had called himself once, and Dean could see it, from the corner of his vision and at the limit of his mind. But it was also blurry, like rote memorization instead of passion. Unfocused intent, all jumbled around hurt and fear. 

The angel poured into the Luis’ open mouth, like the ocean being poured into a waterskin. Dean could see where the seams were becoming undone, where the leather of the body would burst, but still the angel poured itself in an endless stream of light. Dean had time to turn away, before the end. The rest of the crowd was not so lucky. Warm blood and burnt flesh struck them, seeping into clothes and sticking to hair and skin. It broke the trance at last, and the gentle murmur of worship was replaced, in increment, by screams. The primal animalistic parts of the human brain reacting to nothing quite as strongly as it did to its own viscera. 

The current reversed, like watching slow-motion lightning. The hissing tone had a distinct forlorn note to it, as the angel retreated to the high sky to join the aurora. They resumed their waiting pattern, circling like hungry scavengers over a feast. Waiting for the next person to stop fighting, to roll over and submit, to consent to their death on every level that mattered. The man was talking again, maybe he had never stopped talking. The screams were fading, but the crowd had moved away, towards the cars and the ditches by the side of the road.

“Hey, Featherbrain, how about something with a bit more… stamina?” Dean shouted, claiming the cleared empty space. “Or can’t you get it up if faced with a little bite?” 

“Winchester,” the man said as he turned to face him. He separated each syllable as he spoke the name, loading each with as much acid as he could. “I will wipe your foul presence from my Father’s creation, scrub it clean of your taint. There will be songs about Briathos, he who thwarted the scourge.”

“Wow.” Dean let out a slow, low, whistle. “That’s a mouthful. Are you sure you’re up to the task?”

The angel’s eyes glowed, the bright blue and white of grace, of the heart of a star. Dean felt the intent, the will to smite him from this world and erase his presence. But what is a star, in all its blazing glory, faced with the inexorable patience of a black hole? Dean smiled and opened his arms, welcoming the blast and letting it run through him, away from the world. The fall had broken the angels, severed their connections to each other and the memory of their Father. They weren’t even a Host now. It took less than a minute for the angel’s battery to run dry. 

“My turn,” said Dean. 

“But... How?” sputtered Briathos, blinking at his hand in consternation, as if it has betrayed him. The outline of him beyond his body was hollowed out, like a shell or moulted skin.

“Last time the God-squad went after something like me, it took an archangel, or so your books say. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but by my count, you’re all out of those.” 

Briathos lunged at Dean, first his real self then his vessel, effectively telegraphing his move. Dean took half a step back and twisted, turning the angel blade in his hand as he aimed for the soft exposed stomach. He was expecting the block, angels were warriors after all, but he wasn’t expecting how weak it felt. How utterly mundane. They grasped at each other’s wrists. Dean pinned Briathos’ angel blade against his hip, but that left him exposed to the angel doing the same. Barithos used his momentum to drive the blade into Dean’s thigh with his knee. It burned with the throb of grace, like frostbite.

Dean growled and shoved against Briathos’ shoulder, freeing the blade from his leg. The strange stroboscopic movement warning him of the coming stab and it was easy enough to block with his forearm. Dean wondered again if the grace depletion had pushed the angel all the way to human, the hit was strong but not bone-crushing as he had expected. He wrapped his hand around the hilt of the blade and pushed it down and out of the way, getting a clear shot to punch Briathos in the chest. The angel reeled back as if winded, though still holding onto Dean’s wrist. Instinct made Dean blink and the jet black nictitating membrane covered his eyes. It washed away everything worldly and made the crowd thin and insignificant, but it pulled the half-glimpsed view of the angel’s true form into focus. There were too many limbs, spidery and skittering at odd angles. He couldn’t quite understand how they all connected, but it didn’t matter. Barithos couldn’t touch him with any of them. Anytime he tried the limb would shrivel and dry up, like time-lapse photography of rot. 

The oily blackness receded as Dean blinked again, leaving just enough behind for him to predict the next attack, coming from overhead and aimed at his throat. Dean grabbed at his arm and turned, using the angel’s death grip against him. He tangled his arms and threw him over his shoulder. Briathos landed heavily but was scrambling to turn and regain his footing. Dean didn’t give him the chance, burrowing his angel blade deep into Briathos’ throat, catching his breath as the last of his grace bled out from his eyes and mouth. The outlines of wings, broken and torn, etched themselves on the bitumen. 

“Go home,” Dean said, tilting his head back to look at the sky. “There’s nothing here for you. Go home.” There was a sound, as of church bells ringing in a thousand dirges, and then only an absence. Dean took a second to savour the crystalline quality of the moment. His clothes were soaked in blood and bodily fluids, but he could feel the warm knitting of cells in his legs, closing the wound, repairing the nick on the bone. His hand ached from the ridges of the angel blade. He sat on his haunches, straddling the empty husk that had once held Briathos (he who thwarts demons). It was white out bliss, the high vaunted by mystics and drug pushers in equal measures. 

Sounds washed around him, the electronic signals from open car doors, the jumble of music from dozens of unsynced radios. He realized the screams had died down, turning to whimpers and quiet sobs. The growl of motors turning back on after the sudden failure was a deep bass note that grounded the whole piece. 

“Michael? Michael, what happened? Are you ok?” Ximena’s touch on his back was fleeting, from fear and distaste at the gore. Dean sighed and let go of the bliss, feeling only a vague wistfulness in its place. He got to his feet and turn to look at her. Ximena recoiled away and he realized he was still holding the blade, white-knuckled. 

“Fallen angel,” he answered. He traced the edge of the wing burns with his toes, the lines of them harsh in the scattered headlights. 

“You say this as if it’s a normal thing that happens.” 

Dean shrugged and walked past her. Maria Isabella was clawing at her eyes, frantic and speaking in words fragments too fast for him to follow. He caught her hands, keeping his touch gentle but firm, and pulled them away from her face. “Easy. You don’t want to rub that stuff in.” Turning to look over his shoulder he asked Ximena, “Do you have any bottled water in the car?” 

She did. Dean took his time washing the fluids out of Maria Isabella’s eye, keeping his voice low and soothing. There wasn’t much to be done, really. Wash it out and hope Luis wasn’t a carrier for anything bloodborne. Angel occupancy failure vaporized a failed vessel into a fine mist, so there was no stray bits of bones to worry about, no puncture wounds. “Go help your father,” Dean told Juan as the teen hovered and fretted by his shoulder. “And find some towel or clothes to wipe this out”. 

The word spread and rescue effort organized, the untouched adults gathering the little ones away from the spectacle of it, those less affected running back and forth, bringing supplies and change of clothes. There was no modesty, not on that road in the middle of nowhere under the blind sky. Soon there was a pile of bloodied clothes next to the cooling corpse and an uncomfortable silence around it.

“I’ll deal with this,” said Dean. “Go ahead, you’ll be fine.”

“ _¡No mames!_ ” said Rodrigo. Some colour had returned to his face and his hands had stopped shaking, but there was something hurt and defiant in his eyes. Maria Isabella sat on the passenger seat of his truck, silent, running the beads of her rosary in her hand. She had refused to let it go, so glops of drying blood fell off, as she moved it. “You will need help, to dig a grave.” He walked around the back of the truck and unearthed a shovel, from beneath the clothes and kitchenware. 

“Ok, then,” said Dean. He picked up the body, throwing it over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and turned to the field. Camilia jumped over the ditch with the casual lightness of youth and helped him out on the other side, pulling at Dean’s arms and clothes and narrowly avoiding falling in herself. Two more shovels lay on the ground with her. 

Digging an unmarked grave wasn’t really a three-person job. Dean had done it often enough alone, or with Sam, taking turns. It did make quicker work of it, in the end. Dean filled the hole with dried corn husks as tinder, half a box of salt from his kit and someone’s donated tequila. Camilia threw in a packet of matches, the cardboard cover painted in garish colours and advertising a seedy stripper joint on the other side of the country. Dean didn’t ask. The fire spat and struggled over the wet flesh, there was not enough fuel for a proper cremation, no trees for a pyre. The hair burnt as well as some of the skin and Dean deemed it good enough. Sometimes, it was almost as much about the ritual, as it was about forensic countermeasures. When the flames died down they smothered the remains with dirt and patted it as flat as they could. Hopefully, the farmer wouldn’t go digging when he came to harvest. 

Ximena dropped into the passenger seat of the car. She barely made the suspension move at all. Dean turned to hide his smirk. She was glaring ahead, defiant and straight-backed. Rodrigo broke the staring contest first. Slowly, much more slowly than the road conditions warranted, the caravan began to move on. 

"Fallen angel?"

"Yep. Well. Angels, plural."

"And you knew how to fight it off? Just like that?"

Dean glanced at her and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. She was staring at her own hands, the paler skin of the palm dark and rusty. "Nope. I knew how to _kill_ it. Just getting them away would have been a little blood and a little finger paint." The road was uneven. Dean allowed the wheels of the car to dip into one of the larger holes. The open duffel rattled on the back seat; clothes spilled out of the opening like guts and revealed the gleaming shapes of the weapons there.

" _¡La madre que me parió!_ I can still smell it." It was true. Dean didn't mention that the burnt flesh notes hadn't followed her quite as preceded her. Ximena continued, "The symbol on your chest. It is not really a drunken night mistake is it?"

"No. It’s a... a warning maybe."

"Like the ones the military men get, or the gangs.."

"Something like that." He sighed. He knew the shape of this conversation. He’d had it many times. He wasn't in the mood for the recruitment spiel. "I didn't have a choice, growing up. The hunting... the Life claimed my mother. My father. My brother." He stopped, seeing Sam, three days dead and lying on a discarded mattress. That had been the first real mistake, the one thing he would take back if given a chance. "Eventually it swallowed me whole and I didn't even want to get out anymore."

"I know that feeling."

"I bet you do." He let the silence fall over them. He could see the questions on her face, percolating like good coffee. He turned on the radio, only to turn it off less than a mile later. It was still full of static.

“But you got out,” she said, instead of any of the prying questions she could have said. Smart girl.

“Yeah. I did. You could too.” When she didn’t answer Dean looked over at her. She was staring out the window and it mirrored back her tight-lipped expression. He stabilized the wheel with his knee and bent to reach the bag on the backseat, digging out the scholarship folder. “You deserve a way out,” he said.

Ximena traced the glossy letters with her fingertip, as if opening the folder was too much as if it would burn her. They drove the rest of the night without a word. 


	10. Bloodied Hands

The camp in Hartrow county made the previous apartment look luxurious. Dean took one look at the particle board floor and the shoddy walls — which had gaps large enough for mice and rats to go through — and took the executive decision to live in his car. There was relief, for a moment, on Rodrigo’s face. They had arrived well past mid-day, and though it was technically fall the heat was unrelenting. Humidity saturated the air, making it hang heavy, almost palpable. Heat radiated from the ground under Dean’s feet, through the thick soled boots, and sweat started to gather along his skin. There was nowhere for it to evaporate, so it failed in keeping him cool.

Anger and resentment hummed around him. The land had been reclaimed, mostly, from the swamp and the sea by man and concrete. It was a construct, as unnatural as Frankenstein’s monster but on a larger scale, petty and uninviting. Dean had always stirred them clear of the state when finding hunts. He hated the place and it returned the favour. 

The Delgados didn’t unpack as much as strategically play Tetris, stacking boxes and bags in the cabin in a way that freed up as much floor space as possible. They would be at this orange grove for maybe a week, then moving on. Citrus harvest stretched until May, but it was built in parcels and jumped all over. 

Where Dean hadn’t been sure he liked apple picking he hated the oranges. The bag he had to fill was almost a big as him, reaching from his collarbone to his knees. It got impossible to manoeuver as it filled up, up and down the weathered wooden ladders. Dean had splinters in both hands by the end of the first day. Pulling them out was only a transient relief. A tractor equipped with a crane and a cage-like container came around to pick up the filled metal tub placed every 3 or 4 trees. It was always too soon, too fast and they struggled to fill the quota before it came to collect. 

By the second grove, he had the hang of it, though the distaste didn’t lessen. By the third, it didn’t matter. There was a steady stream of people coming to seek work. They brought news of failed harvests, of hail storms and droughts and rot deep in the roots. There weren’t enough cabins, though families tried to open their door as best they could. Some of the people Dean knew, like Luis’ sister and nephews that had split of to go pick berries, after the angel. Many he didn’t. They were trickling in, dislodged by the lack of work like water finding its way to the deepest point. There wasn’t enough work for everyone, not in the groves and not in the small sleepy towns next to it.

By the fourth farm, the orange trees started to fail. Or maybe they had started a long time ago, but the failure became widespread to the point where even Dean was able to notice it. The fruits were small and green, hanging off branches that had lost most of their leaves. The few that remained were curled and yellow, showing patterns of the disease along the veins.

“I don’t understand,” he heard Noah say. His family owned the farm and while he had the soft hands and stomach of bureaucrats, he also had the sun etched squinting lines around his eyes. Dean hadn’t hated him on sight. “We did all the quarantine and management. There’s usually a few years before it gets this bad.”

“What causes it?” asked Dean, as he crouched by one of the trees. Most of its leaves had moulted and they crunched underneath him. A few off season flowers bloomed, beautiful in their unnaturalness. 

“Insects. They carry the disease. We’ll go on quarantine, but this whole acre is lost. Nothing but kindle wood now. I’m going to have to cut down on workers too.” 

Dean didn’t answer. He would have sworn the issue came from the soil. Or from something at ground level. There were marks on the trunk of the trees, dark green and iridescent like the shell of some beetles. They looked like vines, or tentacles, wrapping around the plants. He could pick up a trail of sorts, but it was disturbed by bootprints and the heavy threads of the tractor. 

Dinner that night was sombre. Marco and Felipe barely ate, claiming to be full from the school lunch they’d had. Dean knew no school cafeteria tray was that full, but the other adults seemed to accept the flimsy apology at face value. Ximena passed the food around, small bowls to make supplies stretch. Maria Isabella stared at hers until Rodrigo spooned food to her lips, with gentle care Dean hadn’t seen before. It grated on him, enough to make up his own excuse and step out. The newspaper clipping in his pocket felt crisp and brittle. He knew in his guts of guts those deaths had been a vampire nest’s feeding. 

A machete through a blood sucker’s neck would have been exactly what the doctor ordered, just enough crunch and arterial spray to carry him over, a bit more than a maintenance hit with an edge of fun. Would have been, if someone else hadn’t had the same idea and beaten him to it. The fire department was still fighting the last of the flames, the empty strip mall gutted and drenched in filthy ashen waters. Dean saw the other car, old and inconspicuous, leaving from the other side of the parking lot. Hunters, like an invading species on his turf.

Dean made it home with the dawn, several hundred miles later and with nothing to show for it. There had been no marks to hussle in the bars of that town where the would-be vampire nest had been, only the same underlying restlessness and hunger. Not enough jobs and too many mouths. The needle of on the tank of his ride was hovering around empty when he turned off the engine. A few more days of this and Dean would kill someone to… well. Kill someone. 

Breaking down trunks and stripping branches was a poor stop-gap measure. The axe felt good in his hand and it gave him something to focus on, between breathing in the sawdust and the not-quite-enough burn of the blisters that bloomed and vanished from his palms. Noah was cutting down the dead trees with a chainsaw, his face hidden by a combination of dust mask, hat, and oversized earmuff. There was sorrow cascading from him, the deep type that stank of childhood afternoons and soured lemonade. 

“What’s with this stuff?” asked Dean, when Noah turned off the chainsaw, filling the sudden silence. He ran his fingers along the beetle green marks. They didn’t feel any different, not tacky or dry or any rougher than the bark around them. They looked deliberate from this close, however. Definitely more like a whip wrapping around the trunk or some sort of octopus-style limb without the suckers. 

“Once we’ve run it through the woodchipper, the city is taking them. I think they have something with an incinerator and biomass? Waste of time if you ask me.” Noah patted the fallen trunk in front of him. Humans are incredibly good at picking up patterns and acting on them with little conscious input. From little kids avoiding cracks in sidewalks and walking only on the black tiles to augury in tea leaves and the guts of goats. Noah didn’t even trace the marks on the trunk, didn’t splay his fingers to avoid touching it. It was interesting to watch. “What are you doing for the storm?” Noah asked, oblivious. “Moving to higher ground or going to try to make a few bucks in town helping with the fortifications?”

“There’s a storm coming?”

“Yeah. haven’t you been watching the news?” 

“Not if I can help it”, said Dean, moving so he could trade places with Noah and break down the tree. The mechanical whirl of the woodchipper cut all conversation for a time.

“Big mama of a storm, headed this way,” said Noah when the machine winded down. “We won’t get hit by landfall, but lots of rain. Keep yourself dry.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m a survivor.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever you say.” Noah pulled the ripcord of the chainsaw. They didn’t speak again.

War had many rules, most of which could be applied to hunting. In smaller scale, with less soldiers and resources. But, overall, it applied. Know your enemy. Above nearly all else, know your enemy. Dean broke into the small library that night. It held almost nothing, less books than bound copies of magazines and yellow-paged Farmers’ Almanac arranged by year. It was slim pickings, but he had done more with less. He left the plywood undone as he moved out. The storm would shoulder the blame.

“Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack, “ Dean muttered to himself. He had run out of fuel a mile short of the trailhead, leaving him to carry gear by foot like some army recruit at boot camp. The hiking trail crossed a swamp, a raised wooden path above brackish water. There were no birds diving in, huddled away against the coming storm. Only the great reptiles disrupted the water, old and primal. They would not interfere, one predator to another. 

A bit more than halfway down, the trail forked, just a tiny thing into a man-made island of concrete, with a shed. It had maintenance tools, shears, and rakes and was a convenient place to get out of the rain. The padlock hadn’t been much of a challenge. It was out of the way, only had one door, and the concrete floor was in decent enough condition. Dean dropped the heavy canister by the door and the three-legged stool in the middle of the room. It took several trips to empty the shed and layer in his modifications. 

When he was ready, he set fire to the bucket on top of the stool. The thing about witchcraft, at its core, was that form never mattered. There were hundreds of competing symbols, beliefs and systems, rituals, and incantation. Unless you were aiming for something incredibly particular or stupidly powerful, they were all pretty much equivalent. The trick, the real trick, was imposing human Will on an inhuman world. Dean lit a collection of leaves and thorn flower petals, fruit rinds and fish bait and he focused. “Come to me,” he said, out loud.

It worked, if only because he never entertained the idea that it might not. 

A rustle grew outside the cabin, a wet and fractioned sound of tall grass moving and old trees bending impossibly into strange shapes. Dean didn’t move, as he listened to the groans and strange twisting sounds. Nothing snapped, or broke. He couldn’t quite tell what the creature was when it finally crossed the threshold of the door. Its body was made of plants and leaves, from bright neon green to some so dark as to be almost black, tangled and knotted together. It moved like an octopus would move on land, sending tendrils around and dragging itself forward. Only the eyes were not made of plants, though the sockets were crushed flower petals. The eyes were made of light, the dark yellow of amber, or of fall honey. 

Dean moved his hand and the poorly balanced, almost empty now, canister fell, spreading herbicide across the door, completing the circle. Trapping the thing in, with him. Dean smiled. 

“What in the hell are you?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question, more of a habit or a verbal tic. He didn’t care much, wasn’t going to write an essay on it, to be catalogued and sorted. It was alive and so he could kill it. The creature didn’t answer. It tried to back away from Dean, but stopped before touching the liquid, sending limbs or offshoots at the walls, prodding for an opening. It wouldn’t find any. Dean drew Ruby’s knife.

Killing a creature with no heart — or lungs, or kidney — proved to be interesting. Dean’s hands were covered with thick sap, only slightly warmer than his own skin, sweet-smelling a bit like berries. It stained his clothes and the floor, the walls of the shed where it streaked in abstract patterns. The limbs, cut and sawed off, caught in the seration of the blade or shredded, lived for a moment on the floor, then yellowed and turned to twigs. The creature grew smaller, but everytime Dean cut off a limb a new one sprouted, curly and pale green like pea offshoots, or the translucent bone white of roots. 

It turned to attack, a nightmare movement of leaves and bark and Dean laughed, head thrown back in mirth. The core of the creature was made of entwined roses, the petals dried and curled. Thorns dug at his skin, ripping at the softer tissue of his underarms and his neck. Dean slashed at it, shattering the flowers and cutting out the stems. Merriment rippled under his skin, as the gashes sealed shut. It felt right, to destroy something that, in other light, was made of such beauty. It felt like rampaging through someone else’s garden, like spitting on God’s ego. Dean wouldn’t describe himself as a sadist, that has been Alistair’s game. But he could see, sometimes, why cats liked to play with their food. The Mark hummed and flared, content and delighted. 

Outside the vanguard of the storm reached the swamp, wind rattling the wooden walls with howling glee. Water fell on the tin roof, in careful fat drops at first then increasingly as sheets of water, drowning out the world. The creature retreated, and Dean would have said it was licking its wounds if it has a tongue. It huddled in the corner, looking at him with its luminescent eyes, somehow managing to look sad.

“What I don’t get,” Dean said, wiping some of the blood like sap from his face, “is why something like you would crawl out of the swamp at all. There’s plenty of green stuff to kill here.” The creature rustled, but Dean couldn’t tell if it really understood him. Maybe it was just trying to make itself bigger. 

“Michael?” The voice was unexpected. “We found your car, you need to get out of here, the storm…”

Dean turned to glance at it, yet unwilling to open his back to the thornbush. Juan was standing in the doorway, slack-jawed and staring at the creature about as much as he was gaping at Dean. He was holding a rake in front of him in that useless way untrained civilians hold long weapons. The storm surge slapping against the concrete pillars had masked their footfall. 

“What the fuck is that?” asked Ximena, looking over Juan’s shoulder. The creature gathered itself into a more compact ball under the scrutiny, draping the less defoliated limbs over the frayed bits of itself. Juan yelped at the movement and dropped the rake. Before Dean could react the creature launched itself outwards, walking the wooden shaft as if it was a bridge or a tightrope. It jumped into the swamp as soon as it was clear of the herbicide circle. 

The Mark howled as it left. This was Dean’s kill, his prize, his to destroy and it had been taken, stolen away. It demanded payment, a head or heart, a life snuffed out. Lightning hit somewhere nearby, close enough for the sound to rumble in his chest. Dean jerked his head towards the shed and the kids filed in, out of the storm, obediently. 

He could tell how to hurt them most. Where the bones had been fractured and healed over and would sustain more hits. Where their bodies were worn and tired, soft, easy to break. He knew how their blood would bloom and dry to cake the sun tanned leather of their skins. Juan would scream, high and childlike as he’d strip the manly persona inch by inch. Ximena’s tears would be salty, and she’d be the slowest to break, the one who’d take the blame and be crushed by the guilt. The bloodlust wearing Dean's body smiled and shifted the grip of the knife, assessing for the first cut.

Dean was fading, torn by the gale force of the _other_. The barrier between them was thin and it would be so easy to get washed under and become part of it, to stop fighting. Juan moved and memories washed over him, baby brother Sammy in his place. Baby brother getting the last of the food and the warm coat that one winter, while Dean pretended to be fine. Leaving, without a word just slamming the door and leaving Dean alone. The rage crew with each ghost betrayal. 

Ximena tried to run, but the door wouldn’t budge, held in place by shockwaves of power. Dean crashed against the walls in his mind. She was the sister he’d never had, he felt responsible for her.

The wind died down. Sister. The word rang around Dean like a bell through the sky, echoing in layers that only grew louder. Sister. Sister. Sister. 

Dean fell to his knees, numb fingers dropping the knife. Mud seeped through his jeans as he howled, head thrown back. It was wordless, primal, ripped from himself as much as the other. It held pain older than the creation of words.

When he opened his eyes the strange clouds that had covered the moon were gone. Juan and Ximena were looking at him, holding each other but otherwise motionless. “Go,” he said, his voice hoarse and broken. They moved carefully to the door, like avoiding a coyote or a wolf. They ran only once they were outside. Dean didn’t know if they had looked back at him. In the silver light of the moon the Mark was a dark muted blotch, like the most mundane of faded tattoos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a short Epilogue left. Thank you for reading this far!


	11. Epilogue

Getting back to the Bunker was easy. It was only ever really hidden if you weren’t looking for it. He parked the car by the front door, Sam or Cas could always dispose of it later, or they could keep it. It wasn’t half bad, for a modern plastic death trap. Dean pushed the door, it opened without resistance, unlocked. He could feel the wards tingle against his palm, the chain reaction of them igniting around the doorway and no doubt sounding all sorts of alarms deeper into the Bunker. He squared his shoulders and stepped in, stopping with a curse a few inches later. Either the wards apparently rightfully read him as demonic now, all the way through, or they were built as a one-way filter: letting the dark things out but not in. It had felt like walking in a brick wall, thankfully he healed fast. Broken noses were a mess. Thumping steps heralded the arrival of Sam, disheveled and in his sleep clothes, gun at the ready as he reached the door.

“Heya, Sammy,” said Dean. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr! Come and say hi!   
> https://hermit-writes.tumblr.com/


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